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DEDICATION 



TOWN HALL IN BROOKLINE. 



f 



PROCEEDINGS 



DEDICATION 



TOWN HALL, BROOKLINE, 



February 22, 1873. 




BROOKLINE: ^ 
PREPARED AND PRINTED 

BY AUTHORITY OF THE TOWN. 

MDCCCLXXIII. 



^ 



V-f 



CONTENTS. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 

Building Committee 7 

Appointment of Committee of Arrangements 7 

Proceedings of Committee of Arrangements 8 

JVIusic by Brookiine Choral Club 9 

Order of Exercises 9 

Appointment of President 10 

Appointment of Marshals 10 



CEREMONIES. 

Formation of Procession 11 

Entrance into Hall 11 

Invited Guests 11 

President's Invitation to Prayer 12 

Rev. Dr. William Lamson's Prayer 12 

Mr. AspinwalPs Address of Welcome 18 

Mr. Winthrop's Inaugural Address 17 

Ode by Miss Harriet Woods 57 

Presentation of Keys 57 

Mr. Wellman's Address 58 

Mr. Head's Address 60 

Hymn 62 

Benediction by Rev. Mr. Newton 63 

SUBSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS. 

Vote of Thanks to Mr. Winthrop 64 

Appointment of Publishing Committee 64 



PTtELIMINAEY PROCEEDINGS. 



On the twenty-second day of February, a. d. 1873, the 
building intended for the Town Hall of Brookline was 
dedicated under the auspices of the Committee who had 
been charged with its erection, in presence of as many 
persons as could be crowded into its Upper Hall. The day 
was remarkably fine, though very cold. The arrangements 
were carefully made, and were carried out with such a 
degree of precision and punctuality as to satisfy both par- 
ticipants and spectators. 

The history and description of the structure, from the 
appointment of the Building Committee to the day of its 
completion and dedication, are given in the lucid address 
of William A. Wellman, Esq., the Chairman of the Com- 
mittee, which forms a part of this volume. 

The members of the Building Committee were — 

William A. Wellman. 
John C. Abbott. Augustine Siiurtleff. 

Charles U. Cotting. William Lincoln. 

Charles W. Scudder. William K. Melcher. 

William Aspinwall. Martin P. Kennard. 

The Building Committee invited the Board of Select- 
men, consisting of Messrs. Charles D. Head, Horace James, 
William Aspinwall, James W. Edgerly, and Charles K. 



8 



Kirby, to unite with them in making the arrangements for 
the dedication of the Town Hall to the purposes for which 
it had been erected ; and from these two bodies a Committee 
of Arrangements was formed, consisting of Messrs. William 
Aspinwall, Charles D. Head, William A. Wellman, Charles 
K. Kirby, and Martin P. Kennard. 

As the capacity of the Hall was only sufficient for a 
limited number, this Committee decided to issue tickets of 
admission to the dedicatory ceremonies, and to distribute 
them among the citizens of the town as impartially as pos- 
sible, and to issue invitations to such distinguished persons 
as it was desirable to have present upon the occasion. 
Nearly two thousand tickets were issued, and thus distrib- 
uted. About eighty invitations were issued : to the Gov- 
ernor and other high executive and legislative officers of 
the Commonwealth ; to the Judges of the Supreme Judi- 
cial Court and of the Superior Court ; to the Judges and 
other civil, military, and naval officers holding commissions 
from the United States Government within the Common- 
wealth ; to the Mayors of the neighboring cities ; to many 
of the Clergy of the vicinity ; to Ex- Senators of this Sena- 
torial District ; to Ex-Representatives of the town ; and 
to the various town-officers, both present and past. 

The tickets issued were as follows : — 



BROOKLINE TOWN HALL. 

Saturday, February 22d, 1873, at 3 o'clock. 



ADMIT THE BEARER. 



9 

The invitation issued was in the following form : — 

THE INHABITANTS 

OF THE 

TOWN OF BROOKLINE 

Respectfully request the honor of your company at the 
DEDICATION OF THE TOWN HALL 

On Saturday, February 33d, 1S73, at three o'clock p.m., on which 
occasion the principal address will be delivered by the Honorable 
Robert C. Winthrop. 

William Aspinwall, ^ 

Charles D. Head, 

William A. Wellman, 

Charles K. Kirby, 

Martin P. Kennard, 



Committee of 
A rrangcmetits. 



To 

An answer will oblige. 

A ticket marked " Platform," in red ink, was enclosed 
with the above invitation. 

The music and singing on the occasion was given by the 
Brookline Choral Club, a voluntary association of ladies and 
gentlemen, who meet frequently to cultivate this delightful 
art. 

The Order of Exercises was as follows : — 

I. PRAYER. 

Rev. William Lamson, D.D. 



II. CHORUS, from " Athalie." 
Brookline Choral Club, 



III. ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 

Hon. William Aspinwall. 



10, 

IV. INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 

Hon. Robert C. Wintheop. 



V. ODE. 

Written for the occasion, by Miss Harriet Woods, and sung by the 
Brookline Choral Club. 



VI. Delivery of the Keys, by William A. Wellman, Esq., Chairman of the 

Building Committee, to Charles D. Head, Esq., Chairman 

of the Selectmen. 



VII. HYMN. "Old Hundred." 

The audience are requested to rise and join m sinijing this Hymn, and to resume 
their seats at its close. 



VIII. BENEDICTION. 
Rev. William Wilberforce Newton. 



The Committee of Arrangements appointed their Chair- 
man, Hon. William Aspinwall, President of the Day; and 
he invited the following young gentlemen to act as Marshals, 
to assist in seating persons presenting tickets of admission, 
and they accepted his invitation : — 

Ernest W. Bowditch. 

WiNTHROP S. SCUDDER. GeORGE K. BrOOKS. 

Albert W. Cobb. Francis L. Wellman. 

Thomas Aspinwall, Jr. James H. Head. 

William Saville. Edwin H. Lincoln. 

Samuel F. Train. Otto Von Arnim. 

Charles E. Cotting. Alfred D. Chandler. 



CEREMONIES. 



At three o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday the twenty- 
second day of February, a.d. 1873, the Building Commit- 
tee and the Selectmen and other officers of the town, with 
their invited guests, assembled in the north-west ante-room 
adjoining the Upper Hall ; and having formed a procession, 
headed by the President of the Day, Hon. William Aspin- 
wall, with his Excellency William B. Washburn, Governor 
of the Commonwealth, entered the Hall, and took their 
seats upon the platform. 

The audience, who had been admitted by ticket, had 
already taken their places upon the floor. 

Among the guests upon the platform were his Excel- 
lency William B. Washburn, Governor of the Common- 
wealth ; Hon. Milo Hildreth, Hon. Seth Turner, Hon. Kufus 
S. Frost, and Hon. Edwin Chase, of the Council ; Hon. 
Charles Adams, Jr., Treasurer and Receiver-General ; Hon. 
John H. Clifford and Hon. Emory Washburn, Ex-Governors 
of the Commonwealth ; Hon. John Lowell, Judge of the 
United States District Court ; Hon. G. Washington Warren, 
President of the Bunker Hill Monument Association ; Hon. 
George S. Hillard, Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, Revs. Wil- 
liam Lamson, D.D., John S. Stone, D.D., formerly Rector 
of St. Paul's, Brookline, Samuel K. Lothrop, D.D., Chandler 
Robbins, D.D., George E. Ellis, D.D., Edwin B. Webb, D.D., 
Rollins H. Neale, D.D., Phillips Brooks, D.D., Rev. William 



12 

Wilberforce Newton, Richard Frothingham, Esq., &c. The 
town-officers, present and past, former Senators from tlie 
District and former Representatives of the town, were also 
seated on the platform. 

When all the invited guests had taken their seats, the 
President rose and addressed the audience as follows : — 

It was always the custom of our fathers, and it has always 
been ours in Brookline, to enter upon no great work without first 
seekinsf the aid and blessing of that Great Beina^ without whose 

O o o 

countenance and support the builder builds in vain, hi humble 
observance of this pious custom, let us heartily join in the prayer 
which the Reverend Dr. Lamson is about to offer in our behalf 
to the Great Architect of the Universe. 

The Rev. William Lamson, D.D., pastor of the Brook- 
line Baptist Church, then rose, and offered the following 
prayer : — 

PEAYER BY REV. WILLIAM LAMSON, D.D. 

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we come into thy 
presence to invoke thy blessing upon these services, upon those 
of us who are here assembled ; for we ever recognize thee not 
only as our Creator, but as the God of Providence, and as the 
Father of Light, from whom cometh down every good and every 
perfect gift, and with whom there is no variableness nor shadow 
of turning. Help us to trace all our blessings, all our daily mer- 
cies, all our sources of culture and of enjoyment, up to thee, the 
Infinite Giver. Gratefully would we acknowledge that the lines 
have fallen unto us in pleasant places, and that we have a goodly 
heritage. We would at this hour render to thee our thanks that 
the growth and prosperity of our town have enabled us to build 
this substantial, convenient, and beautiful edifice ; and that on 
this anniversary, so fraught with precious memories, and so dear 
to the heart of every patriot, we are permitted to gather here, to 
set this building apart to the service for which it was designed. 
Smile upon us at this hour with thy favoring providence. Bless 
those who in the future, in coming generations it may be, shall 
gather within these walls. Grant that this building may long 



13 

stand an ornament to the town, and bless all the cheerful gather- 
ings of our citizens. Grant that its erection and its uses may 
contribute to our moral and intellectual culture, to our social en- 
joyment, to our good fellowship. 

Our Father, we ask thy blessing upon the Commonwealth of 
which we are a part ; upon its Chief Magistrate ; upon its exec- 
utive officers; upon its legislators; upon all who are in places 
of authority and of influence ; and upon the entire people. Let 
thy blessing rest upon our country, of which this Commonwealth 
is a part, and grant that it may continue for generations to come 
to be the home of civil, political, and religious liberty, to be the 
home of a Christian civilization. 

Our Father, accept these our thanks, and listen to these our 
petitions, which we present unto thee in the name of Jesus Christ 
our Redeemer. Amen. 

After this Prayer, the Brookline Choral Club sang the 
" Chorus " from Mendelssohn's " Athalie." This piece of 
music was very beautifully executed, and was received with 
rapturous applause by the audience. At its conclusion, 
Hon. William Aspinwall rose, and welcomed the invited 
guests and the assembled citizens, substantially in the fol- 
lowing words : — 

MR. ASPINWALL'S ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 

Fellow- Citizens of Brookline, Ladies axd Gentlemen, — 
My colleagues upon the Committee of Arrangements have ap- 
pointed me to act as President upon this interesting occasion, 
and in that capacity to welcome the guests who have been invited 
to witness the ceremonies of transferring this beautiful Hall, by the 
Committee who were charged with its erection, to the authorities 
of the town, who will have hereafter the duty of preserving it. 
No one can be more sensible than myself how unequal I am to 
this occasion ; and still I shall perform the duty, however inade- 
quately, with greater satisfaction than any I have ever discharged 
in this municipality, because it will associate my name more 
closely than ever with the history of the place I love better than 
all the world beside, — the ancient town of Brookline, — a town 



14 

which, though small in territory, and until recently containing but 
few inhabitants, can challenge comparison with any other town 
or city in this renowned Commonwealth, for early and constant 
devotion to liberty, and for unselfish and unwavering patriotism. 

It is the cordial and respectful welcome of such a town, your 
Excellency, that I have the honor now to present to you. The 
overwhelming majority which, upon two occasions, its inhabi- 
tants have given you, when presented to their suffrage for the 
high office you occupy and adorn, has sufficiently proved the 
esteem in which they hold your political -character. But allow 
me to say, your Excellency, that it is not so much for your 
exalted station that they rejoice to see you here to-day, as because 
they know, as does the whole Commonwealth, that you reached 
that station by none of the arts too common among ambitious 
and self-seeking men, but by the simple force of a private life of 
unsullied integrity, and a public career unclouded by the shadow 
of suspicion. 

And to you, also. Gentlemen of the Council, the people of 
Brookline offer their warmest welcome, — to you, who, under our 
Constitution, share so largely in the anxieties and responsibilities 
of the supreme executive magistrate. Happy the Governor who 
has such good and wise advisers ! 

We had hoped to welcome upon this platform some of the 
learned members of the Supreme Judicial Court and the Superior 
Court of this Commonwealth, who hold in their balances the life 
and liberty and property of every man in the State, from the 
highest to the lowest, from the Governor in his chair of office to 
the poorest laborer in the fields. But they have been unable to 
accept our urgent invitation, and we must content ourselves with 
sending them a message of greeting to assure them that they 
would have been most welcome here to-day amongst a people 
who regard them with the respect and admiration which their 
learning, their ability, their wisdom, and their perfect impartiality 
deserve and receive from all who love virtue and revere justice. 
Our interest in their presence to-day amongst us would not have 
been lessened by the fact that we count among our most valued 
citizens two of the members of the most august tribunal of the 
State.i 

1 Honorable Jolin Wells and Honorable Seth Ames, associate justices of the 
Supreme .Judicial Court. 



15 

And to you also, gentlemen, servants of our National Govern- 
ment, judicial, civil, military, and naval, the people of Brookline 
offer their most kindly welcome. Having at all times, and espe- 
cially during the recent Rebellion, stood by their country in all 
its perils, and having furnished their full proportion of men 
and treasure to keep the unity of the Nation unimpaired, they 
hail your presence here on this birthday of the great Father 
of their Country, as the visible evidence that that country has 
been preserved, and that the peace they strove for has been 
secured. 

And, finally, to you all, our invited guests, — whether you come 
from the counting-house or from the work-shop, from the bench or 
from the bar, from the pulpit or from the lecture-room, from the 
shop or from the farm, — whether you serve more immediately 
the Nation or the Commonwealth, the County or the City or 
the Town, — to you all we proffer a true and hearty welcome, 
trusting that the honor you have done us by your presence 
will be amply repaid by the words of eloquence you are soon 
to hear. 

And now, my fellow-citizens of Brookline, who shall grudge 
us a few moments of congratulation, even if it should savor of 
self-glorification ? Here is our beautiful Hall, so long hoped for, 
at length begun, and now completed! By what steps this con- 
summation so devoutly wished has been attained, it is for the 
worthy Chairman of our Committee to relate. But as his lips 
will never speak what I can tell you from my own personal 
knowledge, I feel it is my right, nay, my duty, to say, — with- 
out arrogating to myself a tittle of the praise to which I think 
they are entitled, — never was a town better served by a Com- 
mittee than you have been by those to whom you intrusted the 
building of this new Town Hall. That there should be lets and 
hinderances in the work was to be expected, for it was to be the 
work of many hands. But, with the exception of those human 
accidents, probably never was an enterprise from its beginning 
more fortunate, and in its end more successful. If it shall take 
from your treasury a little more money than you first appropri- 
ated, you can console yourselves with the reflection, that, in the 
interval between your first appropriating vote and your last, you 
gained wealth enough to warrant the increased expenditure ; 



16 

since, in that space of time, the valuation of the property of this 
town from nineteen millions swelled to nearly thirty millions of 
dollars. 

Welcome, then, fellow-citizens, to your own beautiful Hall, 
now soon to be used for all its various purposes, — of business, of 
instruction, and of pleasure, for town meetings and caucuses, for 
lectures and concerts, and even for theatricals and balls ! Wel- 
come within its walls, old and young, rich and poor, — all equal 
here! Welcome, you who are native here and to the manner 
born, and you whom we sometimes invidiously call " new- 
comers," when you don't agree with us old settlers, though we 
are forced to confess that you now form the larger, if not the 
better, part of our inhabitants ! Welcome, all, — welcome ! 

But, fellow-citizens, I have almost forgotten that I am here 
little more than the master of ceremonies, whose part it is to 
welcome the guests and to present them to each other, and then 
to retire ; and that there yet remains a most important part of 
this my duty unperformed. I have to introduce to our invited 
guests and to you, the principal speaker, the only orator, on this 
occasion, — a gentleman who, though not yet old, was presid- 
ing over our House of Representatives thirty-five years ago, — 
who was first a member of Congress from Boston more than 
a generation since, — who was chosen Speaker of the National 
House of Representatives in the first half of the present century, 
— and who,' during this long period of time, up to the present 
hour, has stood in the foremost rank of American scholars, ora- 
tors, statesmen, and practical philanthropists. 

Why need I name him, since there is but one man in Mas- 
sachusetts to whom this description can apply ? Only, fellow- 
citizens, because he won his earlier fame as a citizen of Boston ; 
but we of this town, for some years past, have rejoiced in him as 
one of our own inhabitants, and we can boast to-day that we 
have the right to name him as 

Robert C. Wintheop of Brookline. 

Upon this introduction, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop rose, 
and spoke as follows : — 



MR. AVINTHROFS INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen of Brookline; 

Friends and Fellow-Citizens : 

I am deeply conscious how small a claim I have to the distin- 
guished position which has been assigned me on this occasion. 
I am, as .you all know, but an eleventh-hour Brookline man ; 
while around me are those who have borne the burden and heat 
of the day, not only in planning and preparing this beautiful 
Hall, but in building up the Town itself — of which henceforth, 
so long as it remains a Town, this stately edifice is to be the 
symbol and the seat of government — to its existing prosperity and 
importance. In yielding, however, to the kind and complimen- 
tary request of your Selectmen and Building Committee, I had 
the satisfaction of reflecting, that, whatever I might find to say 
here to-day, in this Inaugural Address, I should at least be free 
from the temptation or imputation of commending any thing to 
which I had myself contributed, and should be enabled to pass 
an impartial and dispassionate judgment on the efforts and accom- 
plishments of others. A residence in Brookline for six or seven 
years, which is all I can claim to have enjoyed, has given me an 
opportunity for observation and inquiry in regard to the history 
and growth of the Town, and for acquainting myself somewhat 
with those who have lived here longer, and who have labored so 
diligently and devotedly for its improvement and welfare. To 
them, the honors of the occasion belong ; and if I shall succeed 
in doing justice to them and their predecessors, and in illustrating 
their services and successes, you will feel, I am sure, that all the 
reasonable expectations of the hour have been fulfilled. 

We are here, on this auspicious Anniversary, — which, more 
than any other day, or all other days, in the calendar of merely 

3 



18 

human nativities, is associated with whatever is brightest and 
best in the history of our country and of the world, — to take 
formal possession of a new and costly Town House, and espe- 
cially to inaugurate and dedicate this spacious and magnificent 
Hall. But we do not forget that this is not the first time in 
our annals that such an occasion has been witnessed here. We 
do not forget that a similar ceremony has taken place even with- 
in the memory of not a few of those who are assembled here 
to-day. Little more than a quarter of a century has elapsed, 
since the beloved and venerated Pastor of your first Parish was 
the chosen and appropriate organ of your Selectmen of that day, 
in welcoming the people of Brookline to what he then called, 
and what was then doubtless considered, " a commodious and 
beautiful," as well as a new. Town Hall. I need not say that 
it is still standing. You are but just relinquishing its occupa- 
tion. It has been the scene of not a few interesting delibera- 
tions and memorable acts. Wise and weighty counsels have been 
heard within its walls. Stirring resolutions have been adopted, 
important measures have been concerted and consummated, by 
those assembled there. Above all, the sacred right of Freemen, 
the Elective Franchise, has, year after year, been exercised there. 
Precious memories of the living, and still more precious memo- 
ries of the dead, cluster thickly within and around it; and they 
will continue to be cherished by many of you, as long as it shall 
survive the changes and chances to which all earthly structures 
are subject. We shall do well, my friends, if we shall render 
this far more commodious and costly edifice as worthy of be- 
ing held in honor by those who shall come after us. The past 
is secure. The future has always its contingencies and uncer- 
tainties. 

Meantime, there are but few of the occasions which have 
been witnessed within those old walls, which we should less 
willingly permit to fall into oblivion, or which some of you, I 
am sure, still hold in fonder or more vivid remembrance, than 
that Dedication Service on the 14th of October, 1845, when 
the excellent Dr. Pierce recounted with so much fulness and 
fervor, and in so much of minute detail, the earlier and the 
later history of the Town. He was my father's friend and 
rny own friend. He was the friend of all, young or old, who 
had the privilege .of his acquaintance, or who were in any way 



19 

brought within the magnetic power of his presence. A man of 
larger heart, of more genial temper, of kindlier impulses, was 
hardly to be found here or anywhere. His cheery tone still rings 
in the ears of all who ever heard it. His erect and stalwart 
frame was a fit setting for so active, eager, inquisitive a spirit. 
He made nothing, even to a late day of his life, of walking into 
Boston from the parsonage on Meeting House Hill, attending 
Thursday Lecture, or perhaps preaching it himself, at the old 
Chauncy Place Church, thence proceeding at once to the Monthly 
Meeting of the Historical Society, then dining with a former Presi- 
dent of that Society,^ where I have so often met him, or with some 
other friend, and at last completing the circuit of no Sabbath 
day's journey by walking back to his Brookline home before sun- 
set. And he could always tell you the precise number of minutes, 
or even of seconds, which the walk either way or both ways had 
taken. This marvellous appetite for trivial details, however, went 
along with the keenest relish for historical and local research, or 
certainly for the results of such research. The history of the 
town in which he so long resided, and the history of the families 
and changing fortunes of his parishioners and neighbors and 
friends, were almost as familiar to him as the Bible from which 
he took his weekly text, or as that grand old psalm which for so 
many years he lined and led, to the tune of St. Martin's, at our 
Annual Commencement dinner. He had passed the full term of 
threescore years and ten when he delivered that Inaugural Dis- 
course in 1845. Indeed, I have seen it carefully recorded in his 
own diary, that on that 14th of October he was " exactly 72 
years and three months old." But he was still in complete pos- 
session of all his faculties. His memory, and his power of em- 
ploying its ample stores, were alike unimpaired ; and he gave 
free play to them on that occasion. How then can I hope to 
glean anything for your entertainment or instruction from a field 
which he so vigorously and thoroughly reaped ? What can I 
say of the earlier or later history of your beloved town, down 
certainly to 1845, which he did not abundantly tell you, in an 
Address which is still extant, still remembered by some of you, 
and still within the ready reach of you all ? There is at least 
one, however, of his recorded experiences on that occasion, as ] 
have read it in his own account, from which I may take courage. 

^ The late Hon. Thomas L. Winthrop. 



20 

After slating that he occujDied an hour and a half in its delivery, 
he adds : " I contrived to season my facts by many appropriate 
anecdotes ; so that I succeeded in keeping the audience awake 
throughout the A.ddress." May I not venture to express the 
hope that, in this respect, if in no other, I may be equally suc- 
cessful ? 

In that Address, your late venerable Pastor did not fail, of 
course, to remind his hearers of the fact, which I may be par- 
doned for recalling with more than common interest to-day, that 
the very earliest allusion to the place now known as Brookline is 
found, under date of August 30, 1632, in the Journal or History 
of Governor John Winthrop ; and that the very first authentic 
record of the place is that " Notice being given of ten Saga- 
mores and many Indians, assembled at Muddy River, the Gov- 
ernor sent Capt. Underbill with twenty musketeers to discover, 
&c. ; but at Roxbury they heard they were broke up." Let us 
pause for a few moments, and ponder this brief record, so as to 
unfold something of its real import and significance. 

A little more than two years had now elapsed since the Gover- 
nor and Company of Massachusetts Bay had taken their birth- 
rights on their backs, and their Bibles and their Charter in their 
hands, and had come over to found and establish an independent 
Colony on New England soil ; not yet, indeed, independent of 
the Crown or of the Parliament of Old England, — the time for 
that consummation was still in the distant future, — but a Colony 
wholly independent of control by London Committees or Com- 
panies or Adventurers ; and which, in the bold transfer of its 
Charter, as was so well intimated by John Adams, foreshad- 
owed, if it did not actually contemjilate, the grander Indepen- 
dence, of which he himself was " the Colossus on the floor of 
Congress," in 1776. 

Salem, where the Massachusetts Company landed in June, 
1630, had already been planted by the worthy pioneer Governor, 
John Endicott, whom they had deputed to preside over what was 
called " London's Plantation," subject to their own regulations 
and instructions from time to time. But there was now no longer 
to be any " London's Plantation," or any even nominal subordi- 
nation to any power, on the other side of the ocean, less exalted 
than that of Parliament and the Crown. They came in the 
spirit, and for the purpose of Self-government, to be exercised by 



21 



a Governor and Assistants, and soon by a Legislature, of their 
own choice and upon their own soil. And so they at once sought 
out a place for the seat of that government; and after lingering 
a few months at Charlestown, where about a hundred of the 
planters who came over successively with Endicott and Higgin- 
son had already settled themselves, they decided to cross the 
river and establish themselves at what the Indians called Shaw- 
mut, and what some of the planters designated as Trimontaine, 
— from the three hills then prominent upon its surface, — but 
which from the 17th day of September, 1630, was to bear the 
honored name of Boston. 

Less than two years had thus passed, since the birth, or cer- 
tainly the baptism, of Boston, when the first recognition or 
mention of the locality in which we are interested to-day was 
entered in his Journal by Governor Winthrop. That record, I 
think, is full of implication and suggestion as to the condition of 
the site on which we are now assembled, as well as in regard to 
the immediate circumstances and surroundings of the Massachu- 
setts Colony. Swarms of savages were still hovering around 
them. " Ten Sagamores and many Indians," we are told, were 
assembled in this very neighborhood. ^ A Sagamore is second 
only to a Sachem, or King of the tribe ; and the titles are some- 
times employed indiscriminately. Ten Sagamores would thus im- 
ply a large number of warriors under them. They were evidently 
understood to be lying in ambush ; the Governor's phrase being 
that our musketeers were despatched " to discover, &c." John 
Underbill was the most trusted Captain of that day, bearing 
very muah the same relation to the Massachusetts Colony which 
Miles Standish bore to the earlier but wholly distinct and inde- 
pendent Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth. Twenty musketeers were 
sent with Capt. Underbill, — more than twice the number which 
Miles Standish took with him, when he was despatched on a 
similar expedition ten years before, and when he achieved his 
grandest victory, or what is called his " capital exploit." Every 
thing indicated danger, or certainly the strongest apprehension of 
danger; and before another week had elapsed, although this par- 
ticular party of Indians had been " broke up " or dispersed, we 
find Governor Winthrop recording the gravest reasons for sus- 

^ The site of one of their old forts is now occupied by tlie liouse of my friend 
William Amory, Esq., at Longwood. 



22 

pecting that a conspiracy existed among the Narragansett men 
and the Neipnett men, under pretence of quarrelling with each 
other, " to cut us off to get our victuals and other substance." 
And then the record proceeds: "Upon this there was a Camp 
pitched at Boston in the night, to exercise the Soldiers against 
need might be ; and Capt. Underbill (to try how they would 
behave themselves) caused an alarm to be given upon the quar- 
ters, which discovered the weakness of our people, who, like men 
amazed, knew not how to behave themselves, so as the officers 
could not draw them into any order. All the rest of the planta- 
tions took the alarm and answered ; but it caused much fear and 
distraction among the common sort, so as some which knew of 
it before [that is, which knew that it was a false alarm], yet 
through fear had forgotten, and believed the Indians had been upon 
us. We doubled our guards, and kept watch day and night." ^ 

Such is the picture which Massachusetts and its principal 
town present to us, as we unfold the page which contains the 
earliest record of what is now called Brookline. There was plainly 
no settlement here at that day, or the Governor would have sent 
that little army of musketeers to assist and rescue the inhabitants, 
and not merely to discover and break up an ambush of the natives. 
And may we not well rejoice that it was so ? May we not well 
rejoice that there was no handful of scattered planters here to 
encounter the wild savagery of those " ten Sagamores and many. 
Indians " ; and that Underbill and his twenty musketeers heard 
at Roxbury that they were already dispersed? Yes, my friends, 
let us thank God to-day, that the narrative of our beautiful vil- 
lage — I might rather say, of its pre-historic period — does not 
open with a scene of massacre. Let us thank God, that yonder 
River, " Muddy " as it was called, was not crimsoned and clotted 
with the gore of either white men or red men. Let us thank God, 
that our Brook was not destined to be called " Bloody Brook." 

I do not undervalue the gallantry and heroism of those upon 
whom the dire necessity has been laid, whether in earlier or later 
days, to wield the sword, and wage war to the death, against an 
Indian foe. Brookline, as we shall presently see, has exhibited 
her full share of such heroism. I fully recognize, too, that a 
real and inexorable necessity has often existed, for suppressing, 
and punishing by force of arms, the lawless ferocity of the' savage 

1 Winthrop's History of New England, vol. i. p. 89. 



23 

tribes. The early Colonists must have abandoned their planta- 
tions altogether, unless they were ready and resolved to defend 
them at all hazards against the conspiracies and treacheries and 
mad assaults of the aboriginal race which surrounded them on 
every side. Even at this hour there may be Modocs or Apaches 
uncontrollable except by force. But we may all still sympathize 
with the sentiment, which was so exquisitely expressed by the 
pious John Robinson in Holland, ■\\^hen he heard of the first 
great victory of Miles Standish, in which six Indians had been 
slain, — " It would have been happy, if they had converted some, 
before they had killed any." We may all rejoice to remember, 
also, that within a few months only of the date of this record 
about the Indians at Muddy River, there arrived at Boston, 
and was immediately settled at Roxbury, where the first planters 
of this village so long went for their Sunday worship, a godly 
minister from England who made it his special mission, in the 
same spirit which had actuated those brave Jesuit-priests in 
Canada, to Christianize and civilize the natives ; and who, during 
the next thirty years, had not only preached to many of them, 
and taught many of them to pray, but had accomplished the 
more than Herculean labor of translating the whole Bible into 
their language. No more marvellous monument of literary 
work, in the service of either God or man, can be found upon 
earth, than that Indian Bible of the noble John Eliot. Nor can 
any of us fail to admire and applaud the earnest and seemingly 
successful efforts, for the introduction of a more humane and 
Christian policy towards the Indian Tribes still left in our land, 
by the illustrious Soldier who has just been called again to the 
Executive Chair of the United States. There has been nothing 
more creditable to our Country, since, for a similar exhibition of 
humanity in the removal of the Cherokees beyond the Mississippi, 
William EUery Channing paid that most eloquent and most 
enviable tribute to Winfield Scott.^ 

Pardon me, my friends, for such a digression. I may seem to 
have travelled a long way out of our little Brookline record ; but 
it has only been, after all, to explain and amplify the gratification 
I could not refrain from expressing, and which I am sure you all 
feel with me, that those ten Sagamores and their followers were 
fairly dispersed before Underbill and his musketeers arrived here ; 
1 Chanuing's Works, vol. t. p. 113. 



24 

and that the very first page of your records escaped, as it so 
narrowly did escape, from the stains of conflict and carnage. 

Let me hasten now to resume the more direct story of the 
Town, and to pursue it with greater rapidity. The venerable 
Pastor of your first Parish, when he occupied the position which 
you have done me the honor to assign me on this occasion, did 
not omit to inform, or remind, his audience, that under the repul- 
sive name of Muddy River, or sometimes Muddy River Hamlet, 
the territory which Brookline now covers was for nearly three 
quarters of a century included within the limits and jurisdiction 
of Boston. Perhaps, therefore, some of our friends who are so 
eager to return within the same limits and jurisdiction, may be 
found hereafter adopting the policy of the friends of Texas many 
years ago, who, when they had discovered some pretence for the 
idea that Texas had once been a part of the Louisiana Territory, 
hastened to prefix the little syllable re to annexatio7i, and thought 
to strengthen their case by peremptorily demanding the re-annex- 
ation of Texas to the United States. I may be pardoned for 
remembering, that a member of Congress at that day, from the 
neighboring City, who shall be nameless on this occasion, ven- 
tured to suggest that these zealous and irrepressible advocates of 
Texas might be wiser, if they would exhibit as much of the 
suaviter in modo as of the fortiter in re. But jesting apart, 
and I have nothing serious to say in reference to any mooted 
question of local policy to-day, we are all well aware, as a 
matter of history, that for seventy-three years from the time when 
Boston first had a local habitation and a name on this side of the 
Atlantic, it embraced the territory now occupied by this Town. 
And its embrace, as we shall see, was a tight one, with a grasp 
not easily unloosed. It is thus from the old records of Boston, 
or of the Colony, that we derive almost all which is known of 
the village hamlet in which Brookline had its origin. I know 
not exactly at what date the first settler was found here, nor who 
he was. But as the General Court of the Colony ordered the 
construction of " a sufficient cartbridge " over Muddy River as 
early as August 16tli, 1633, we may reasonably conjecture that 
transportation had commenced, and that the lands had then 
begun to be cultivated and occupied. Yet the order seems to 
have been very slow of fulfilment ; since, on the 4th of March of 
the following year, we find the General Court passing a more 



25 

urgent and specific order, " That Mr. Richard Dummer and John 
Johnson shall build a sufficient cartbridge over Muddy River 
before the next General Court, and that Boston, Roxbury, 
Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown shall equally contribute 
to it." 

This certainly looked like business ; yet it is as late as the 2d 
of June, 1640, that we find in the records of the Colonial author- 
ities, that " The charge of Muddy River Bridge, being 151. os. Gc?., 
was ordered to be allowed as foUoweth : — By Boston, 61. ; by 
Roxbury, 51. ; Dorchester, 11. 7s. 8d. ; Watertown, 11. 7s. lid. ; 
Cambridge,! |^_ 7^^ lie?." The building of a bridge across Muddy 
River in those days was probably accounted as great an under- 
taking as the building of a railroad to the Pacific in these; and 
I doubt not that the accounts of Richard Dummer and John 
Johnson, for fifteen pounds, three shillings and sixpence, were 
analyzed and audited more scrupulously and rigidly than any 
Erie, Pacific, or even Credit Mobilier accounts for millions of 
times as much. 

At the General Court, at Newtown, held by adjournment, on 
the 25th of September, 1634, we find a somewhat singular Order 
of two parts, in the following terms : — " It is Ordered, with the 
consent of Watertown, that the meadow on this side Watertown 
weir, containing about 30 acres, be the same more or less, and 
now used by the inhabitants of Newtown, shall belong to the 
said inhabitants of Newtown, to enjoy to them and their heirs 
forever, &c. Also, it is ordered, that the ground about xMuddy 
River, belonging to Boston, and used by the inhabitants thereof, 
shall hereafter belong to Newtown, the wood and timber thereof, 
growing and to be growing, to be reserved to the inhabitants of 
Boston, provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that if Mr. 
Hooker and the congregation now settled here shall remove hence, 
that then the aforesaid meadow ground shall return to Water- 
town, and the ground at Muddy River to Boston." Such legis- 
lation seems to partake too much of the quality which gave the 
name to our River to be easily made clear. But as the eminent 
Thomas Hooker with his congregation did soon afterwards 
(1636) remove to Springfield, and thence to Connecticut, all 
orders conditional on his staying in this vicinity may fairly 
be dismissed as null and void. 

1 Newtown had become Cambridge at this time ; the name having been changed 
in 1638. 

4 



26 

Turning now to the Boston Records, we find that in 1635, at a 
general meeting of the inhabitants, on the 14th of December, "it 
was agreed, that Mr. William Colbourne, Mr. William Aspin- 
wall, and three others, shall lay out at Muddy River a sufficient 
allotment for our Teacher, Mr. John Cotton." 

This was the celebrated Clergyman who had come over from 
old Boston to new Boston, and whose historical fame is enough 
for the glory of both cities. Though I believe he never lived 
here himself, this allotment was doubtless the origin of the estates 
which some of his family enjoyed here soon afterwards. At the 
same meeting of the people of Boston, it was agreed, " that the 
poorer sort of inhabitants, such as are members, or likely to be, 
[probably meaning members of the Church] and have no cattle, 
shall have their proportion of allotments for planting ground 
and other, assigned unto them by the allotters, and laid out at 
Muddy River by the aforenamed five persons, — those that fall 
between the foot of the hill and the water, to have but four acres 
upon a head, and those that are farther ofT, to have five acres per 
head." 

Four years later still, in 1689, it was agreed, " that five hundred 
acres be laid out at Muddy River, for perpetual Commonage to 
the inhabitants there and the Town of Boston, before any other 
allotments are made." 

If this perpetual Commonage, ten times larger than what we 
now know as Boston Common, had been indeed perpetual, 
Boston would not now have been in need of seeking land for a 
public Park. But the small allotment system soon most happily 
prevailed over any such extensive arrangement for Commonage, 
and the land was quickly dotted over with those little independent 
freeholds, which have been, and ever will be, the best foundations 
and the strongest bulwarks of freedom and self-government. No 
dependent tenantry could have ever made Massachusetts what 
she is. Nothing but independent freeholds can keep her what she 
is. Public Parks are grand things for the amusement, recreation, 
and health of the whole people. Great landed estates are the 
natural support of an aristocracy. The division of lands is as 
essential to liberty, as the division of labor to prosperous busi- 
ness and the advancement of industry and the arts. 

Biit something more than independent freeholds was required, 
and ever will be required, for the security of freedom and for the 



27 

wise exercise of self-government. I need hardly say that I mean 
Education ; and not until 1686-7 do we find any specific local 
provision here for that all-important object. It was on the 8th 
of December, old style^ of that year, the 18th of December, new 
style, — a little more than one hundred and eighty-five years ago, 
— that the government of the Colony, then under the temporary 
Presidency of Joseph Dudley, in answer to a Petition from 
Muddy River, passed the following memorable Order: " Ordered, 
that henceforth the said Hamlet of Muddy River be free from 
town-rates to the Town of Boston ; they maintaining their own 
highways and poor, and other public charges, amongst them- 
selves ; and that within one year they raise a School House, and 
also maintain an able reading and writing Master; and that the 
inhabitants annually meet to choose three men to manage their 
affairs." 

The acceptance of that Order, at a full meeting of the inhabi- 
tants, precisely a week after it had passed the Colonial Council, 
with the vote for the maintenance of the School Master, is the 
first formal entry in the Town Clerk's records of Brookline ; and 
certainly no worthier or more welcome beginning could have 
been desired or devised for your recorded history. That history, 
indeed, is still the history of a hamlet, appurtenant to Boston. 
But the freedom from Boston rates, with the liberty " to choose 
three men to manage their affairs," was a great step towards 
independence, and made the hamlet a town in almost every 
thing except the name. The little triumvirate which first 
administered the powers thus granted to Muddy River, must not 
fail to be remembered on such an occasion as this :-^ They were 
Ensign Andrew Gardner, John White, Jr., and Thomas Sted- 
man. 

This virtual independence, however, seems to have been of 
brief duration. No sooner had the tyrannical Andros and his 
government been overthrown, as they so richly deserved to be, 
than Boston, in March, 1690, disannulled this arrangement, and 
voted "that Muddy River inhabitants are not discharged from 
Boston to be a hamlet by themselves, but stand related to Boston 
as they did before the year 1686." Ten or eleven years more of 
quiet submission rolled on, when the inhabitants of this place 
were emboldened by the increase of their numbers and of their 
wealth, to request the consent of Boston to their becoming a 
separate Town ; and curiously enough, in view of the facility of 



28 

modern locomotion, one of the reasons assigned was the remote- 
ness of their situation ! But Boston resisted and resented the 
petition, and voted that though the inhabitants of Muddy River 
" had not for some years been rated in the Town rate ; yet, for the 
time to come, the Selectmen should rate them in the Town tax 
as the other inhabitants, and as they used to be." 

A question of Taxes was thus evidently at the bottom of the 
controversy with Boston for separation and independence. And 
questions of taxation seem to have been at the bottom of almost 
all political controversies, small and great, in our own land and 
in other lands, from the days of Ship money down at least to the 
days of the Tea tax. There seems to be in human nature every- 
where an inherent aversion for Tax-layers and Tax-gatherers. I 
recall at this moment only one notable instance of any thing 
like voluntary submission to taxation. There may be others in 
Dutch History or elsewhere. But for this I turn back to the 
pages of Holy Writ; and even this may have meant something 
more or less than meets the ear. You all remember the Gospel 
account of what happened at the time of the first advent of our 
Saviour, in which it is recorded that "all went to be taxed, 
every one into his own city." It is a charming narrative, hal- 
lowed in all our hearts at once by the sacred volume in which 
it is contained, and by the exquisite story of which it is the 
preamble. But I fear that we must wait for the second coming 
of our blessed Lord before such a record, in its literal inter- 
pretation, will be found again anywhere. The tendency of later 
days, certainly, in some parts of the world, not a thousand miles 
off, has been to flee from one's own City, or one's own Town, 
to escape taxation I It has been partly the result of extrav- 
agant and wanton expenditures by those in authority, and partly 
of capricious and unjust appraisements of individual estates. 
But a fair and equal proportion of our property is a debt due 
to the government, and to a government of our own choice ; and 
debts to the government, whether of the Nation, the State, the 
City, or the Town, are nothing less or other than debts, and 
ought to be so recognized and so discharged. Every man knows 
what he owes, and where he owes it ; and it is not only a wrong 
upon the public treasuries, but a wrong upon our neighbors, 
throwing upon them the burden of unequal contributions, to run 
away and leave our part unpaid. I have sometimes thought 
that in the common case qf double vesidence, if I may so call 



29 

it, a provision of Law might be made that a person should be 
rated in both places, and one-half of each Tax bill be paid in each 
place. But the only radical cure must be found in correcting 
the abuses of our municipal governments, large or small, and in 
quickening the consciences and the sense of duty of the tax- 
paying community. 

Boston, it seems, desired and determined to hold our little 
hamlet still amenable to her own assessors ; and nothing remained 
for the inhabitants here except an appeal to the Colonial Legisla- 
ture. Such an appeal was made without success in 1704, Boston 
still making strenuous opposition to it. But a new Petition, 
signed by thirty-two Freeholders, headed by Samuel Sewall, Jr., 
and which seemed to imply in its terms that the objections of 
Boston had at length in some way been overcome, was presented 
during the following year ; and on the 13th day of November, 
1705, the Act of the 4th year of the reign of Queen Anne, as it 
carefully sets forth, was passed and signed by Governor Joseph 
Dudley, creating the inhabitants of Muddy River a Town by the 
name of Brookline. 

The Act was a brief one, but there was at least one remark- 
able provision in it, by which the inhabitants were " enjoined to 
build a Meeting House, and obtain an able Orthodox Minister, 
according to the direction of the Law, to be settled within the 
space of three years next coming." Religious education was a 
part of the system by which Massachusetts was built up ; and 
though we have wisely abandoned all attempts at prescribing 
what is, and what is not, Orthodox, and have adopted the vol- 
untary principle in regard to places for public worship, we shall 
do well to bear in mind that no mere secular instruction, how- 
ever complete and thorough, was regarded as sufficient for sus- 
taining free institutions by those who founded them. This 
condition of the Brookline charter, however, was not fulfilled, it 
seems, until nearly three times " three years " had expired. It 
was not until the year 1714 that a Meeting House was erected 
here. Before that time, the settlers here, we learn, had united in 
worship with the First Church in Roxbury ; and good Dr. Pierce 
has given us an amusing anecdote of a lady of this place, of the 
olden time, " rising up early on every Lord's Day morning, adjust- 
ing her head-dress over a pail of water, for want of a looking- 
glass, and then walking five miles to Roxbury meeting " I I know 



30 

not whether another record of such a mirror can be found since 
Narcissus admired himself in a fountain and was metamorphosed 
into a flower. 

No wonder, that in view of the necessity of a walk, or even 
a drive, to Roxbury, in order to find a place for public wor- 
ship, the people here made such exhausting efforts to provide 
a place for themselves, as it would seem from your Records 
they did. In those days, it will be borne in mind, every Town 
was called upon not only to send a Representative to the General 
Court, but to pay his expenses and charges for going, staying, and 
returning. But on the 14th of May, 1714, — the year the first 
church here was erected, — we find a vote of the Inhabitants 
deliberately declining to send a Representative " upon account of 
their building a Meeting House, and the great charges thereof 
for such a poor^ Utile toivn,''' and desiring and praying the Honor- 
able House of Representatives to excuse them for that year. 

It may help us to illustrate the period when Brookline first 
became a Town, and to fix it in our memory, if we bear in mind 
that the first Newspaper in British North America had been pub- 
lished the very year before, and that a very remarkable child was 
born in the early part of the very year after. The Newspaper 
was a weekly print, on half a sheet of pot paper, in small pica, 
and it was called the Boston News Letter. The child was a 
strong, vigorous boy, christened on the day of his birth in the 
Old South Church, and giving the earliest promise of the won- 
derful career he was to run ; and his name was Benjamin Frank- 
lin. The great printer follow^ed hard after the first Newspaper ; 
and the Boston, of which Brookline was just ceasing to be a part, 
was the birthplace of them both. 

And thus, my friends, seventy-three years after those " Ten 
Sagamores and many Indians " had been lying in ambush at 
Muddy River, Brookline at last stands before us, with at least 
thirty-two freeholders, with all the privileges, and in all the dignity, 
of a Town. 

The Petition itself, singularly enough, asked only to be " a 
separate village, or peculiar ; " and this designation is twice 
repeated by the Petitioners. " A Peculiar " was an old English 
ecclesiastical term, which stood for a Parish exempt from the 
jurisdiction of the Ordinary of the Diocese, and subject only to 
the Metropolitan. But there was another signification, for which 



31 

Dr. Worcester has given us the authority of John Milton's glo- 
rious prose, — " One's own property." This, doubtless, was the 
sense in which it was used in the Petition. Brookline was hence- 
forth to be "its own property," and to do its own rating and 
taxing. We may well be satisfied, however, that the Colonial 
Council declined to take the Petitioners at their word, and saved 
them from being laughed at, as they would have been if the inhab- 
itants of Muddy River had been incorporated as " a Peculiar." 

But there is another peculiarity about the Petition. Its thirty- 
two signers had but just half that number of separate surnames 
among them all. There were five of the name of Gardner, and 
five of the name of Winchester; three of the name of White, 
three of Stedman, and three of Ackers ; two of the name of 
Aspinwall, and two of Devotion ; and one each of Sewal], Boyl- 
ston, Sharp, Ellis, Woodward, Holland, Shepard, Chamberlain, 
and Seaver. These were the old family names of the place. 
There may have been others, and doubtless were. There may 
have been differences of opinion about making Brookline a Town 
or a Peculiar in that day, as there certainly are about unmaking 
it at this day; or other considerations or circumstances may have 
prevented some of the inhabitants from signing the Petition. But 
those sixteen names of those thirty-two Freeholders must ever be 
associated with your first existence as a Town. Some of them 
are already inscribed upon your highways, as the names of streets 
or avenues. Many more of them might well be inscribed there. 
I know not why we should go out of our own local history to 
find names for our thoroughfares. I even doubt whether it is 
worth while to go into the woods and forests for such a purpose, 
when we have at hand the names of men who cut down the 
woods and cleared the forests for us. Walnut and Chestnut and 
Cypress are sonorous and significant titles, more especially if 
stately rows of shade trees are set out along the roadside in cor- 
respondence with the names. But Aspinwall, and Boylston, and 
Sewall, and Winchester, which you have, and Gardner, and 
Sharp, and Stedman, which I believe you have not, would sound 
as well and signify more. It is not enough to write our local 
history on perishable records. It should be written where he 
who runs may read it. I have often lamented, with others, that 
so few of the names of the Founders of my native City were 
inscribed on its principal streets. The new parts of the City 



32 

seemed to afford the very opportunity for repairing such an omis- 
sion. The musical titles of the English Peerage, however, — 
Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, and the rest, — have been al- 
lowed to prevail over the honest patronymics of our own settlers 
and citizens. But henceforth, as long as we are a Peculiar or a 
Town, I trust that the names of our Brookline streets, and school- 
houses, too, may be taken from her own earlier or later history. 

Not a few of the names signed to that Petition were eminently 
worthy of such a commemoration, if of no other. Samuel 
Sewall, Jr., was not only himself the first signer of the Petition 
and the Town Clerk who attested the act of incorporation, but 
his father was one of the largest early landholders of the place ; 
a member of the Colonial Council at the time; one of the Colo- 
nial Judges from 1692 to 1728, and Chief Justice for the last ten 
of those six and thirty years. It is true, and " pity 'tis 'tis true," 
that sharing in the delusion which so widely prevailed through- 
out the Massachusetts Colony during the first year of his long 
judicial career, he concurred in the condemnation of those con- 
victed of Witchcraft. But so had Sir Matthew Hale, one of 
the purest and wisest of Old England's Judges, — little more 
than a quarter of a century before. Sewall, too, five years after- 
wards, made a frank and manly confession of his grievous mis- 
take, imploring publicly " the pardon of man and God for his 
guilt." Who will not say Amen ! to the noble lines of our charm- 
ing Quaker Poet — 

" Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
Whom even his errors glorified, 
Like a far-seen, smilit mountain side 
By the cloudy shadows, which o'er it glide " ! 

Whittier did not forget, and none of us would be willing to 
forget, that Sewall's Tract, entitled " The Selling of Joseph," — 
a copy of which, found among my own family papers, was 
recently reprinted in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, — was among the earliest public protests against 
Domestic Slavery, then tolerated at the North as well as at the 
South. He was a man of eminent benevolence and beneficence, 
of large hospitality and comprehensive charity. His wife was a 
daughter of John Hull, another of the earliest landholders here, 
the original Mint-master of the Massachusetts Colony, to whom 



33 

has been ascribed the device of an Indian with his bow and arrow 
on our State Shield,^ and who was the unquestioned coiner of 
those famous Pine Tree Shillings, bearing the date of 1652, 
which gave such umbrage to King Charles the Second, — who was 
only aj3peased, it is said, by the suggestion of Sir Thomas Tem- 
ple, or somebody else, that the Tree intended to be designated 
waB the Royal Oak which saved His Royal Majesty. The wife 
of John Hull was Judith Quincy, daughter of Edmund Quincy,^ 
the founder of that distinguished family in New England, whose 
blood, of course, our first signer inherited. Can any thing more 
be needed to make the name of Sewall a household memory 
• in Brookline ? It has been said that the Judge stood godfather 
to the Town, and gave it its name from the little brook which 
ran through his own'meadows. If he did, the engrossing clerks 
of the Colony and the Town failed to adopt his spelling of the 
name. On turning to his own manuscript Diary, not many days 
ago, I found the following emphatic entry, under date of Novem- 
ber 12, 1705: — "Brooklyn is pass'd to be a Township p the 
Council"; while more than a year earlier, under date of 1 April, 
1704, he writes, " visited my valetudinarious son at Brooklin." ^ 
The final e is needed to bring these discrepancies from the Town 
name, as it is properly written and pronounced, within the recon- 
ciling principle of what the lawyers call the " idem sonans.^^ 

The name of Gardner stood second on that successful Peti- 
tion, and five of that name were among its signers, — Thomas, 
Joseph, Thomas, Jr., Caleb, and one whose Christian name has 
been worn off in the lapse of years. Perhaps it was Andrew ; 
for Andrew Gardner, you remember, was at the head of the little 
triumvirate selected to manage the local affairs of the village nine 
or ten years before. Thomas Gardner was himself the first 
Deacon of the first Church in Brookline. His grandson, Isaac, a 
graduate of Harvard in 1747, and afterwards a leading man of 
the Town, respected and beloved by all, was among those who 
went out from Brookline on the 19th of April, 1775,. and was 
killed at Cambridge by the British troops on their retreat to 

1 More probably, he was only the engraver of it. 

2 The marriage ceremony was performed by Governor Winthrop " on the ll"* 
of the S? month," 1647. 

3 The Diary repeats the latter spelling in the following record, dated July 11th, 1704 : 
" Son and Uaugliter Hirst, Joseph and Mary, rode with me in the Coacli to Brooklin, 
and there dined at my son's with the Governour, his lady, Mr. Paul Dudley and wife," 
and other grand company. " Sung a Psalm." 

5 



34 

Boston; while, on the following 17th of June, Col. Thomas 
Gardner of the same stock, though then living over the Brighton 
border, fell nobly at Bunker Hill. Could any worthier name be 
recalled on this occasion, more especially since it is henceforth to 
be associated, not only with those heroes of the past, but with 
a recent munificent donation to your Public Library by one of 
your living fellow-citizens of the same name?i 

The name of White stands third on the Petition. It has been 
found before on the list of those first three Selectmen, and is to 
be found again in connection with a liberal gift of Woodland for 
the maintenance of the Brookline minister. 

Thomas Stedman, the third of those three Selectmen, is the 
fourth signer of the Petition; and the fifth is John Winchester, 
Brookline's first representative to the General Court, in 1709. 

And now we have a name as eminent for its worth, as it is 
first in alphabetical order. The sixth and seventh signers were 
Samuel and Eleazer Aspinwall. Capt. Samuel Aspinwall was 
born here in 1657; and, from that year to this, whether as hamlet, 
village, peculiar or town, Brookline has never been without a 
distinguished bearer of his name and blood. The old house built 
by his father before 1666 is still standing, or at least trying to 
stand. Of the venerable elm which overshadowed it certainly 
for more than a hundred and fifty years, — if, indeed, it were not 
coeval with Columbus, — nothing remains but the antique roots, 
and a few feet of massive but mutilated trunk. They are almost 
the last relics of the old Muddy River Hamlet, and I wish they 
could be enclosed and inscribed as a monument of the remote 
past. What an inspiring stump that would be for an open-air 
speech on some historical anniversary! If nothing else can be 
done, I trust that enough of it may be secured as a desk for this 
very platform. If it were here at this moment, my manuscript 
would have a most congenial resting-place, — more precious than 
the most skilful carving or veneering of Oak, or Maple, or Satin- 
wood. 

But the old family tree is still fresh and vigorous, and has 
literally borne leaves for the healing of the people. No name of 
his period — in Brookline history, certainly — has been more 
honored, or more worthy of being honored — not always, alas, 
the same thing — than that of the late Dr. William Aspinwall, 

* On the 6th of January, 1871, the sum of Ten Thousand dollars was presented 
to the Public Library of Brookline by John L. Gardner, Esq. 



35 

so long an eminent physician of the Town, and who, while 
devoted to the duties of his profession and to the interests of his 
native place, found time to serve the State with distinction as a 
member successively of both branches of the Legislature and of 
the Executive Council. You, all know, too, how respected and 
beloved was his son, the late Augustus Aspinwall. But what 
may I say of another son still living ; who, until a few weeks 
past, exhibited so little of old age except its experience, its wis- 
dom and its venerableness, that no one was ready to give credit 
to the tale which he sometimes told of a birthday in Brookline 
eighty-six or eighty-seven years ago ; with that empty sleeve 
which he has carried for nearly sixty of those years, as a badge 
of noble daring while a leader in the Army of the United States, 
in that war with England which we trust will never lose its 
designation as " the last war " ; but who, with the arm which 
was left him, has done as much of faithful service to his Country 
and his Country's history, at home and abroad, as any boasted 
Briareus of ancient or of modern fable.^ He is not with us here 
to-day, as he so recently promised to be; but all our hearts are 
with him in his chamber of sickness; and every one of you will 
eagerly unite with me in the hope, that he may still be spared 
to enjoy the respect and affection of all who know him ! 

The name of Aspinwall is followed by that of William Sharp, 
the only representative of that name on the Petition ; but his 
father, or it may have been his grandfather, John Sharp, had come 
here with the earliest Aspinwall, while two of his family, both of 
them Robert Sharp, father and son, had already fallen bravely 
in battle while fighting against the Indians. The father fell in 
King Philip's War, on the 18th of April, 1676 ; and in the grave- 
yard at Sudbury, not far from the Wayside Inn, which Longfel- 
low and Parsons have both so charmingly illustrated, may be 
read the following inscription : " Capt. Samuel Wadsworth of 
Milton, "his Lieut. Sharp of Brookline, and twenty-six other 
souldiers, fighting for the defence of their Country, were slain 
by the Indian enemy, and lye buried in this place." And if any 
additional claim could be needed for a grateful remembrance of 
the name on this occasion, it would be abundantly found in the 
fact, that from the daughter of John Sharp were descended those 

1 Col. Thomas Aspinwall, for nearly forty years United States Consul at London, 
who, within the last three years, lias edited and annotated two volumes of valuable 
Papers for the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



36 

admirable and brilliant Buckminsters, the revered pastor of Ports- 
mouth and his eloquent son of Brattle Street, of whose Me- 
moirs it was long ago said by Thomas Carlyle, the Historian, 
that " it gave a much better account of the higher sort of char- 
acter in New England than any thing he had seen since Frank- 
lin's writings." 

I can follow this list of honored names but little farther. Yet 
I must not omit the very next one ; that of Edward Devotion,^ 
from whose estate the Town ultimately received no less than 739 
pounds and 4 shillings, lawful money, for the use and mainte- 
nance of its schools ; as large a sum nominally as John Harvard 
left to the College at Cambridge in 1638. A century and a quar- 
ter had, indeed, made a wide difference in the actual value of the 
gifts ; but if Harvard's name has been given to a whole Univer- 
sity, the name of Devotion is certainly worthy of being inscribed 
on one of your Town Schools. 

One other name, standing near the foot of the list, but the 
associations with which are by no means of inferior interest, must 
close my allusions to these memorable signers of that little dec- 
laration, or petition, for independence. I need hardly say that I 
refer to that of Peter Boylston. A spirit of independence might 
almost seem to have been transmitted with his blood, for his 
daughter was the mother of brave old John Adams. Himself the 
son of the earliest physician of Muddy Paver, he was, also, the 
brother of that celebrated physician and surgeon, Dr. Zabdiel 
Boylston, who during the prevalence, in 1721, of that terrible 
scourge of which we have recently had so many unwelcome 
reminders, is recorded, on yonder tombstone, to have " first intro- 
duced inoculation into America " ; and who persisted heroically 
in the practice, beginning with his own son, in spite of the men- 
aces and positive assaults of a prejudiced and exasperated popu- 
lace. He is said to have been " execrated and persecuted as a 
murderer " ; " his house [in Boston] to have been attacked with 
violence " ; he himself to have been shut up at one time for a 
fortnight in a secret apartment, while " the enraged inhabitants 
were patrolling the streets with halters, threatening to hang him 
on the next tree." Yet inoculation was justly regarded, no long 
time afterwards, as great a discovery and as valuable a prevent- 
ive, as vaccination is at this day. It had been for the first time 

1 I learn, from my friend William I. Bowditch, Esq., that the old house of Ed- 
ward Devotion is still standing. 



37 

performed in the English dominions, we are told, only seven or 
eight weeks before, on a daughter of the celebrated Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, who had witnessed the operation in Turkey, 
during her residence in Constantinople, w^here her husband was 
the British Ambassador. Visiting England a few years after- 
wards, Boylston was immediately recognized, and was at once 
the subject of that rare distinction for Americans, an election 
as a Fellow of the Royal Society. Paul Dudley, a son of Gov- 
ernor Joseph, and John Winthrop, a great-grandson of the first 
Governor, were Fellows about the same time ; and Cotton 
Mather, who, it is said, co-operated with Boylston, and was, in- 
deed, " the first mover," in introducing inoculation, has also the 
addendum of F. R. S., and certainly supposed himself entitled 
to it, though some shrewd doubts have been rife in later years 
whether it was ever actually conferred upon him.^ But Zabdiel 
Boylston was a man of remarkable qualities; an eminent natu- 
ralist for that period, eagerly collecting whatever was rare in the 
way of plants and animals, and transmitting specimens of them 
to England ; while his skill as a physician and surgeon secured 
him a distinguished reputation both at home and abroad. No 
name among the signers of the Petition which resulted in mak- 
ing Brookline a Town, on the 13th of November, 1705, is more 
worthy of commemoration than that of Boylston. 

And now, my friends, what was it to be made a Town ? What 
was it in that day ?' What is it in this ? Profound investiga- 
tions have been made, from time to time, as to the historical 
origin of these little municipal organizations. . I am content to 
leave this question to-day, certainly, where John Milton left it 
two centuries ago. " But I say " (were the words of that wonder- 
ful writer of prose as well as poetry), " but I say that even Towns 
and Boroughs are more ancient than Kings; and that the people 
is the people, though they should live in the open fields." Who 
can overestimate the importance and dignity of such organiza- 
tions of the people ? The more any one studies the history of 
New England, and of Massachusetts in particular, the more he 
will be impressed with the vast and varied influence which has 
been exerted by our Town System, not only in promoting the 
moral and social welfare of the inhabitants, but in advancing and 
sustaining civil freedom, and in preparing the people for meeting 

1 Dr. Allen, in his Biographical Dictionary, says that Mather was made a Fellow 
in 1713. 



38 

those great emergencies and exigencies which have successively 
marked our political progress. The right and the duty of the 
citizens to understand and to manage their own local affairs ; to 
establish and superintend their own schools ; to organize and 
enforce their own police ; to lay and levy their own taxes, and to 
regulate and control the expenditure of the moneys raised by 
taxation ; freely choosing their own agents for all these local 
purposes, and their own Representatives for the larger concerns 
and counsels of the Commonwealth; — the possession and the 
exercise of these special powers and obligations of Towns, as they 
were so long known from the earliest period of our Massachusetts 
History, have done more than all other things combined, to 
quicken the intelligence, sharpen the faculties, and develop the 
manhood and self-reliance of the whole people, and to make them 
capable of achieving and upholding the prosperity and the liberty 
in which we now rejoice. 

We sometimes speak of Education, as if it were confined to 
the School-house, the Academy, or the College; and so in great 
part it must be for the young. But Republican Institutions do 
not merely demand education for their support, they supply it in 
their own nature and essence. Free Government is itself an 
education, which goes on long after Schools and Colleges have 
done their work. The education of a Free Press ; the education 
of the Jury-box and of open Court-rooms ; the education of the 
Reading-room and the Public Library ; the better and more im- 
portant education of the House of God, where religious freedom 
and the rights of conscience have been firmly secured ; but greater 
and more vital than either, in every mere worldly view, the edu- 
cation of the Town Hall, — who can exaggerate the results of 
them all ? Yes, my friends, these Town Halls, where men are 
first trained and exercised in watching and in working the ma- 
chinery of self-government, and are habituated not merely to 
observe and inspect, but to take part in setting in motion, and in 
keeping in motion, the very springs and wheels and levers of all 
political action, have furnished, and must always furnish, the 
true Schools of the Citizen. And how much they have done to 
foster and cherish that spirit of equal rights and individual inde- 
pendence which is at once the source and the safeguard of civil 
freedom I Tyranny and oppression, at home and abroad, have 
always dreaded and hated Town meetings. Sir Edmund Andros, 
when he was playing his fantastic tricks with the New England 



39 

Colonies, is said to have solemnly prohibited all Town meetings 
in Massachusetts except once a year on the 3d Monday in May. 
When Boston, in 1657, thirty years before Andros, had appointed 
a Committee to consider the model of a Town House, and to 
take up a subscription " to propagate such a building," she had 
taken the first step in a path which could have no doubtful ter- 
mination. " Propagating Town houses," as it was quaintly styled, 
was nothing less than propagating treason and defiance to tyranny 
and despotism. Had Lord North, a century afterwards, succeeded 
in shutting up Faneuil Hall, the virtual town house of Boston, a 
few years earlier than he did, or even in turning the Old South 
into a Post-Office, — and had silenced Warren and Quincy, and 
James Otis and Samuel Adams, — the Stamp Act and the Writs 
of Assistance, the Tea Chests and the British Redcoats, might have 
encountered a far less stern reception than they did. While, on the 
other hand, if the centralizing tendencies of modern times, which 
the wonderful facilities for locomotion and intercommunication 
have done so much to stimulate, — diminishing so seriously the 
importance and individuality of the smaller towns, and sometimes 
swallowing them up bodily in great cities, — if these tendencies 
had been possible, and had prevailed, a century and a half ago, 
we should have looked in vain for not a few of the influences 
which have most efiectively moulded the character and developed 
the capacity of our people, and made them the free, intelligent, 
self-relying people which they are at this hour. The remission 
and relegation of all the affairs of a community, and of almost 
all their rights and duties except the Elective Franchise, to 
Boards of Aldermen and Common Councils, is a necessary evil, 
if not a positive advantage, in great cities ; but the nearer power 
is kept to its original source, in the deliberate consultations and 
direct acts of the people themselves, the purer and safer will be 
the administration of local government, and the more will the 
people be interested, and instructed, and felt, in the working of 
Republican institutions. An old English Poet, two hundred 
years ago, spoke of making " one city of the Universe ; " ^ and 
some of our Legislators would seem to have caught the same 
inspiration. But I may be permitted reverently to doubt, whether 
the Universe will be quite ready for such a consummation, until 
the grand prophecy of Holy Writ shall be accomplished, and the 

1 Dryden, in his Annus Mirabilis. 



40 

New Jerusalem be seen descending from heaven, " into which 
there shall no wise enter any thing that defileth, neither whatso- 
ever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." 

Think not, my friends, that I am pleading against any impend- 
ing danger. If Brookline is indeed ready to relinquish her single- 
blessedness, and has put on her beautiful garments to-day in 
preparation for the wedding, it is as little my province to forbid 
the banns, as it is to give away the bride ; though, perhaps, I may 
be pardoned for hoping. Churchman as I am, that the ceremony 
may be completed without the employment of a ring ! 

To be made a Town, then, in 1705, was to be admitted to an 
equal partnership in that great company of Massachusetts muni- 
cipalities, which were gradually but surely building up the Colony 
into a grand Commonwealth, fit to take its stand and do its whole 
share in establishing and upholding an Independent and United 
Nation. The old Colony of Plymouth, with all its cherished Pil- 
grim associations, after just threescore years and ten of separate 
existence, had been made a part of Massachusetts, only fifteen 
years before, under the new Provincial Charter. There were 
at that time about eighty-two towns in Massachusetts, not 
including such as have since fallen within the jurisdiction of 
Maine, or other adjoining States; there are now, I believe, 
more than three hundred and forty. Brookline was the eighty- 
third, if my careful friend Mr. W. H. Whitmore has counted cor- 
rectly ; ^ and she was not slow in attesting her title to be included 
in this goodly fellowship. Her records, indeed, afford ample evi- 
dence of the patriotism and public spirit which have characterized 
her inhabitants in every memorable period from that day to this. 
I have taken up so much time, however, in recounting the expe- 
riences of her earlier days, that I must forbear from following 
them along in the same detail. I do not regret it, and I hope 
you may not regret it. The pioneer planters of our villages and 
towns, and even the founders and fathers of our State, have 
long been in danger of being overlooked, and almost forgotten, 
in the larger concerns and louder claims of later generations. 
The admirations, I had almost said, the idolatries, of the imme- 
diate hour, absorb us all. The present fills our view. If it is 

^ It is not altogether easy to give these numbers with precision, owing to the 
changes in tlie towns, and in the State, since 1705. By the Table, No. VII., in the 
Massachusetts Census of 1805, Brookline would appear to be the seventy-ninth of 
the then existing towns, in the order of Incorporation. The annexation of Koxbury 
and Dorchester to Boston would thus leave her now the seventy-seventh. 



41 

not he that is living and acting to-day, it is he who died yester- 
day, upon whom all our praises are lavished, and for whom the 
stateliest monument or the costliest statue is at once prepared. 
We must go to the humble village churchyards for the crum- 
bling memorials of some of our noblest builders and benefac- 
tors : — 

" Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse, 
The place of fame and elegy supply." 

If I shall only have freshened and deepened the inscriptions on 
some of those ancient grave-stones, I may safely leave the fame 
of later generations to others ; — more especially as your " Brook- 
line Transcript " is furnishing from week to week, with an affec- 
tionate interest which betrays a lady's pen, the materials of a 
local history, which at no distant day, we trust, may put on the 
shape of a permanent volume. 

Yet I cannot even approach a conclusion of this Address, with- 
out a cursory glance at what Brookline has been doing during the 
more than a century and half since she assumed her majority and 
asserted her independence ; and more particularly during the lat- 
ter part of that period. I will not attempt to entertain you with 
figures, either statistical or rhetorical. The gradual growth of 
the population, until it now counts nearly seven thousand in- 
habitants and eleven hundred voters, — while in the list of the 
population of Muddy River in 1687, there were but just fifty 
names, and Dr. Pierce told us there were only sixty-five voters 
when he first came here in 1796 ; — the increase of wealth, real, 
or certainly appraised, until it has been seriously doubted of late 
whether it be not the richest town of its size in the whole Union ; 
the diversification of business and industry; the aggregate of 
crops or of cattle; the improvement of highways; the multipli- 
cation of schools and of churches ; the opening of public Squares 
and Playgrounds ; the establishment of a Public Library ; all 
such details may well be left for the Census, or the Annual Re- 
ports of your Selectmen. Nor will I rob your Town Records of 
their interest for the future antiquary or annalist, by reproducing 
too many of the Resolutions and proceedings which have illus- 
trated the patriotism of the Town, at each succeeding epoch of 
our Colonial or National history. Those records are, indeed, 
rich in Revolutionary memorials, as I have found by personal 
examination, and one or two of the most notable of them I 
must not omit to mention. 



42 

On the 15th of December, 1767, it was voted unanimously, 
" That this Town will take all prudent and legal measures to 
promote Industry, Economy, and Manufactures in this Province, 
and in any of the British American Colonies, and will likewise 
take all legal measures to discourage the use of European super- 
fluities;" and five persons, "William Hyslop, Esq., Capt. Benja- 
min White, Isaac Gardner, Esq., Mr. John Goddard, and Mr. 
Samuel Aspinwall, were thereupon appointed a Committee to 
prepare a form of subscription against receiving such European 
superfluities. This was Brookline's first response to the mem- 
orable Act of Parliament, which had just imposed a tax of three 
pence a pound on Tea. 

On the 11th of December, 1772, it was voted to choose a Com- 
mittee to take under consideration the violation and infringe- 
ments of the Rights of the Colonists, and of this Province in 
particular, and " said Committee to be a Committee of commu- 
nication and correspondence with the Town of Boston and any 
other Towns on the subject of our present difiiculties." 

On the 26th of November, 1773, Brookline proceeded to ini- 
tiate further and more decisive action in regard to certain cargoes 
of Tea, then " hourly expected to arrrive." Her Resolutions 
were strong and uncompromising, as your Records abundantly 
show. She was, of course, one of the Five Towns — Dorches- 
ter, Roxbnry, Brookline, Cambridge, and Charlestown — which 
were forthwith summoned by Samuel Adams to meet Boston, in 
Mass meeting, at Faneuil Hall on the 29th. The Committees 
of those five Towns, with that of Boston, were at Faneuil 
Hall again, on the 13th of December; and I need not tell any- 
body that " Boston Harbor was black with unexpected Tea," as 
Carlyle describes it, just three days afterwards. 

On the 1st of March, 1775, we find the Boston Committee of 
Correspondence, in a letter to the Selectmen of this Town, 
" acknowledging the receipt of <£25. 7' 6J'', in cash, by the hands 
of our worthy friend, Mr. John Heath, also wood, mutton, rice, 
corn, &c., it being the very generous donation of the Town of 
Brookline to this devoted place, now suffering the severity of 
ministerial vengeance for nobly exerting themselves in the cause 
of American Liberty." 

On the 20th of May, 1776, six weeks before the Declaration 
of Independence at Philadelphia, it was voted " to advise the 



43 

person chosen to represent this Town in the next General Court, 
that if the Honorable Congress should for the safety of the 
American Colonies declare them Independent of the Kingdom 
of Great Britain, we the said Inhabitants will solemnly engage 
with our Lives and Fortunes to support them in the measure." 
This was Brookline's prompt and categorical response to the 
question ordered to be propounded to all the towns of Massachu- 
setts, by a vote of the House of Representatives on the 10th of 
the same month of May, just seven days before. A single week 
was long enough for notifying and holding the Town meeting, 
and for deciding on the answer ; and my valued friend Richard 
Frothingham, in his admirable History of " The Rise of the 
Republic," just published, has cited no response so early within 
a week as that of Brook] ine. 

You will not have forgotten, my friends that from July, 1775, 
to April, 1776, the American Army was encamped around Bos- 
ton. During a large part, if not the whole, of that period, the 
Regiment of Colonel Prescott, who had so gallantly thrown up, 
and so bravely commanded, the redoubt at Bunker Hill, was sta- 
tioned, together with a Rhode Island Regiment, on yonder Sew- 
all's Farm, a portion of which is now owned and occupied by 
our worthy fellow-citizen, the Hon. Amos A. Lawrence. The 
Brookline Fort at Sewall's Point, of which the outlines may still 
be traced, was a very strong and extensive one, occupying a 
central position between the right and left wing of our Army, 
and commanding the entrance of Charles River. It is a most 
welcome and inspiring thought, for this Anniversary and this oc- 
casion, that Washington himself in those days must often have 
passed somewhere along these very Brookline roads, such as they 
then were, on his way from his head-quarters at Cambridge, 
where Longfellow now lives, to visit the extended lines of the 
American Camp. He must needs have passed, I think, not far 
from where we are now assembled, as he crossed from Sewall's 
Point to Roxbury, and so to South Boston, as it is now called, 
not many days before he stood in triumph on Dorchester Heights 
to witness the British Fleet setting sail in yonder bay, and the 
British Forces finally driven out from Boston and its vicinity. 
We may almost venture to picture him to our mind's eye, at this 
instant, — reining up, perhaps, at the old Aspinwall elm, or gal- 
loping on to Corey's Hill, or some lesser height, to catch a clearer 
glimpse of what the enemy were doing on Boston Common. He 



44 

is now, at the age of forty-three, in the perfect maturity of his man- 
hood. And what a manhood it is ! There is no mistaldng him, 
closely surrounded, though he may be, by a gallant staff and a 
sturdy body-guard. That form of unsurpassed symmetry I That 
modest but commanding and majestic presence ! The bloom of 
youth not yet faded from his noble countenance ! A shadow of 
anxiety may, indeed, now and then be seen stealing over that 
serene brow ; for we must confess that our New England Militia, 
with their short enlistments, and their want of ammunition, and 
their impatience of discipline, often involved him in the deepest 
concern and perplexity. But not yet has he been worn and 
weighed down by the cares and toils of a seven years' war ; not 
yet by the tremendous responsibilities of inaugurating and ad- 
ministering an untried National Government. His great heart, 
his vigorous frame, are still fresh and buoyant. All that Shaks- 
peare has given us of young Harry the Fifth, " with his beaver 
on, witching the world with noble horsemanship," all except, 
thank God, the profligate early life ; all that Virgil has told us of 
the young Marcellus, — '■'■ pietaB, prisca fides, invictaqiie hello dex- 
tera,^^ — the religious sense of duty, the old-fashioned integrity, 
the invincible right arm, — all except, thank God, the untimely 
end ; might help us to picture to ourselves that peerless chief as he 
passed this way almost a hundred years ago, — might help as to 
complete the portrait, of which neither the chisel of Houdon, nor 
the brush of Stuart, nor the stately bronze of Ball or Crawford, 
could give more than the cold outlines. 

Haply, some Brookline school-boys of that day may have 
caught the sound of his horse's hoofs, and gazed up idly at 
him. Haply, some one of their elders may have stared incred- 
ulously, if not rudely, at the young Virginian, who had been 
commissioned by the Continental Congress to supersede and 
outrank all our veteran Wards and Putnams and Prescotts on 
their own New England soil. It was too early for any one to take 
in the full measure and proportions of the destined Father of his 
Country. But what Brookline school-boy is there at this hour, 
what man or woman or child is there among us to-day, who 
would not exchange all other visions of mere humanity which 
have ever been vouchsafed to any one of them, in a longer or a 
shorter life, for one distinct and conscious sight of that supreme 
and incomparable young man I Think over with me, my friends, 
all whom you have ever seen, or ever yearned to have seen, at 



45 

home or abroad, of American or of foreign distinction and celebrity; 
— Emperors at the head of triumphant armies; Kings or Queens 
on some grand festival of coronation ; Roman Pontiffs on their 
Easter throne at St. Peter's ; Franklin with his kite, challenging 
the thunderbolt; Chatham hurling scorn at his own Government 
for employing Indians against the American Colonies ; Burke 
impeaching Warren Hastings, or pleading the cause of American 
Conciliation ; Napoleon at Austerlitz ; Wellington at Waterloo ; 
Webster in the Senate Chamber, replying to Hayne, or at once 
defining and impersonating the noblest eloquence, at Faneuil 
Hall, in his matchless eulogy on Adams and Jefferson ; think 
over each one of them, and tell me whether, with me, you would 
not eagerly have exchanged them all, for the single satisfaction 
of having seen George Washington! 

The few remaining eyes which ever enjoyed that satisfaction, 
even in the closing years of his great career, will soon be sealed 
to all earthly sights. It is seventy-three years ago to-day, since 
on Saturday, the 22d of February, 1800, Brookline, in common 
with all the country, held solemn services on occasion of his 
death, which had occurred on the 14th of December, 1799. And 
from that time to this, nowhere have his character and his prin- 
ciples found warmer admirers or more devoted followers than 
here; nowhere have his name and his fame been more affection- 
ately and reverently cherished. All honor to his memory, then, 
on this one hundred and forty-first Anniversary of his birthday, 
from these scenes and surroundings of his first great triumph in 
the cause of American Liberty I — All honor to the memory of 
him, to whom one Lord Chancellor of England did not scruple 
to write, — "I have a large acquaintance among the most valu- 
able and exalted classes of men, but you are the only being for 
whom I ever felt an awful reverence" ; ^ and of whom another and 
later Lord Chancellor of England did not hesitate to say, " Until 
time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race 
has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration 
paid to the immortal name of Washington ! " ^ 

I am aware, my friends, that, in claims to consideration like 
those I have thus far suggested, Brookline has for the most part 

1 Lord Erskine's letter to Washington, 15 March, 1795. 

2 Lord Brougham, in liis Statesmen of the Time of George III. ; and repeated, 
in precisely the same words, in his Installation Address, as Chancellor of the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh, 18 May, 1860. 



46 

only a joint interest with her sister towns in all quarters of the 
Commonwealth. But she is not without some peculiar titles to 
remembrance and regard, which would secure a more than com- 
mon fragrance for her memory, even should her individuality 
and her name be merged to-morrow in the renown and grandeur 
of the neighboring Metropolis. 

I think no one will dispute that Brookline was for a long time 
pre-eminent in the little cordon of towns which have so long con- 
stituted the exquisite environs of Boston, embossing it with a rich 
and varied margin of lawn and lake and meadow and wooded hill- 
side, and encircling its old " plain neck," as William Wood called 
it, in his " New England Prospect," with an unfading wreath of 
bloom and verdure. I think no one will dispute her claim to have 
given the earliest celebrity to those environs for rural culture and 
beauty. Visitors from other countries, or from other States, carried 
home with them a deeper impression of the charms of this spot 
and its surroundings than of any other region in New England ; 
and when the well-to-do Bostonian, before there were any rail- 
roads or steamers to whirl him off to Scotland or the Alps, or even 
to Newport, or Saratoga, or Niagara, for his summer vacation, 
desired to get a breath of pure air, or a glimpse of green fields, or 
a scent of fresh flowers, by an afternoon's drive, the horse's head 
was turned first, and last, and almost all the time, towards Brook- 
line, by the way, perhaps, of Pine Bank ^ and Jamaica Pond. 
Nature had done much, but cultivation and taste had hardly done 
less, in producing this result. Nowhere did Horticulture find ear- 
lier or more successful votaries than here. Nowhere could there be 
sought and found more exquisite flowers or more delicious fruits, 
in season or out of season, in the open air or under glass. Nor 
was experimental Agriculture without its early and devoted fol- 
lowers here. Meantime there was an elegant and distinguished 
hospitality to be enjoyed in Brookline homes, then filled by men 
of large acquaintance and of larger hearts, to say nothing of 
accomplished and beautiful women, to complete the attraction. 

I do not forget that there were individual instances of the same 
sort of homes in Dorchester or Milton, in Roxbury or Jamaica 
Plain or Dedham, in Brighton or Watertown or Waltham. Still 
less do I forget that almost all these places have been catching up 

1 Then the beautiful residence of James Perkins, Esq., the eldest of the three 
liberal and public-spirited brotliers, of whom two are named hereafter, as having 
lived in Brookline. 



47 

with Brookline, — perhaps outstripping her, — in all these particu- 
lars ; and that both Horticulture and Agriculture may now look 
elsewhere for more than one of their highest illustrations and their 
most conspicuous disciples. I speak of half a century sometime 
closed, during a part of which, certainly, Brookline enjoyed a pres- 
tige for culture and beauty, which might almost have entitled her 
to that appellation of " a Peculiar " for which her old inhabitants 
petitioned. 

Let me not be thought too much disposed to narrow the limits 
either of time or space within which the special graces and at- 
tractions of the Town were to be witnessed. But I have some- 
times thought that there was a little circle of our territory, from 
which had emanated, in successive years, as many good influences 
and examples, in the way of philanthropy and beneficence, ol 
kindness and hospitality, and of every refined culture which per- 
tains to rural enjoyment or improvement, — the culture of the 
field and of the garden, of the manners and of the human heart, 
— as from any spot of equal circumference on any part of the 
globe. Within or around that little circle have lived men of wide 
distinction in every walk of life, some of whose names are asso- 
ciated with the foremost places of the State or the Nation. From 
that little circle have come the original foundations of Asylums 
for the Blind, of State Reform Schools, of a score of the earliest 
scholarships for Harvard University, of a Free Chapel for the 
Poor in Boston, to say nothing of countless munificent dona- 
tions, and of personal services equal to any donation, for Colleges 
and Athenaeums and Schools, for Hospitals for the sick and for 
monuments of the glorious dead. From that little circle, in days 
when such things were rarities, went forth, in thoughtful and 
generous profusion, the choicest flowers and fruits which Nature 
in her season, or art defying all seasons, could produce, to cheer 
the hearts of lingering invalids, and moisten the parched lips of 
the suffering and dying ; while within that narrow circle, too, 
might have been found the highest skill in surgery or medicine 
for their relief or cure. Need I recall the names of Higginson 
and Cabot and Mason, of John C. Warren and Richard Sullivan, 
of William Appleton and John Eliot Thayer, of Benjamin Guild 
and Theodore Lyman and Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, of 
Samuel G. Perkins and his noble-hearted brother Thomas Han- 
dasyde Perkins, whose combined services in public or professional 



48 

life, in the cause of Horticulture or Agriculture, as eminent mer- 
chants or bankers or statesmen, united with the philanthropy and 
munificence which characterized so many of them, make up an 
aggregate claim upon the grateful remembrance of their fellow- 
men, such as can hardly be surpassed or paralleled, for the period 
in which they lived, by the dwellers upon the same number of 
rural acres anywhere beneath the sun I 

I may be pardoned for not forgetting that within that same 
little circle, during a later period, not a few of the grandest bene- 
factions of the late George Peabody, during an occasional visit 
here, were concerted and arranged; and particularly that noble 
Trust for Southern Schools, in the service of which President 
Grant came to Brookline in the month of June last. Nor will 
any of you be likely to forget, that a leading spirit in the relief 
of Chicago and of Boston,^ after the terrible conflagrations which 
have so recently visited them, has been found, for many summers 
past, under the shadows of the trees which surrounded the home, 
and which were planted by the hands, — as he has often told me, 
— of the grand old Colonel Perkins. But I am speaking of the 
past and of the dead, and must not be betrayed into compli- 
ments to the living. 

Who can estimate the blessings which have radiated in time 
past from this charmed and charming little circle in Brookline! 
Who can enter within its limits without catching something of 
the contagion of philanthropy and charity which so long pervaded 
it ! May it not well be an object of ambition, for any one whose 
lot has of later years been cast within it, that he may not be 
counted unworthy of the traditions and associations with which 
it is crowded ; that, as he enters one of those cherished mansions, 
the Genius of the place may confront him with no handwriting 
on the wall — " tecta ipsa misera — quam dispari domino " ! 

True, the men to whom I have referred were mostly but sum- 
mer residents here, and Boston as well as Brookline may claim 
them for her own roll of honor. But some of them, certainly, 
were not only men of hearts large enough for two Cities, but 
were worthy to be claimed, like Homer of old, by seven Cities. 

But can I forget that another and a sadder radiance rests upon 
that little circle ? Shall it ever be forgotten that from the same 
narrow precincts went forth those noble brothers, whose remains, 

1 Hon. William Gray. 



49 

brought home from the battle-fields of the Union, are among the 
precious dust of yonder beautiful Cemetery ? ^ When the tidings 
from Antietam, ten years ago, informed us that the elder of those 
heroic young men had fallen in the lap of one of the grandest 
and most momentous victories of the War, I could not but recall 
the touching lines of an old English Poet,^ whose every phrase 
and epithet, though written a century and a half ago, seemed 
chosen and prepared for his elegy : — 

" Ah, why, dear youtli, in all the blooming prime 
Of vernal genius, where disclosing fast 
Each active worth, each manly virtue lay, 
Why wert thou ravish'd from our hope so soon ? 
What now avails that noble thirst of fame, 
Which stung thy fervent breast ? that treasur'd store 
Of knowledge early gain'd ■? that eager zeal 
To serve thy country, glowing in the band 
Of youthful patriots, who sustain her name 1 
What now, alas ! that life-diffusing charm 
Of sprightly wit ? that rapture for the Muse, 
That heart of friendship, and that soul of joy, 
Which bade with softest light thy virtues smile f 
Ah ! only show'd, to check our fond pursuits, 
And teach our humbled hopes that life is vain ! " 

But no, no, my friends, it was for something more and better 
than to teach our humbled hopes that life is vain. It taught us 
the very reverse of all this. Such a life was not vain. Such a 
death was not vain. They have lighted the way of patriotic 
resolve and noble self-sacrifice in a thousand young hearts, and 
the names of Wilder Dwight and his gallant brother will be the 
watchwords and countersigns of heroic daring, as often as any 
cause of our country shall call for the efforts of its best and 
bravest, to the last syllable of its recorded history. 

But the services of Brookline, and of Brookline men, and women, 
too, must not be dismissed with this brief allusion to the deaths of 
any two of her sons. In the excellent " History of Massachusetts 
during the Civil War," by the late lamented General Schouler, this 
Town is recorded as having furnished thirty-four commissioned offi- 
cers, with the gallant General Wild at their head, and seven hundred 
and twenty men, — "a surplus of one hundred and thirty-five over 
and above all demands." That History, — one volume of which, 
as I cannot but remember in passing, was so appropriately 
dedicated to the late Mrs. Otis, whose memory will long be 

1 Forest Hills. 2 Thomson. 

7 



50 

associated with the observance of Washington's Birthday as 
a holiday, — that History contains the record, too, of not less 
than twenty thousand dollars raised by the ladies of the Town 
and expended for the comfort of the soldiers ; of more than 
thirty thousand dollars subscribed for the organization and 
equipment of the Second Regiment of Volunteers ; and of nearly 
a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars appropriated and 
expended by the Town from its own treasury on account of the 
War. Your worthy Town Clerk, Mr. Baker, does not regard 
even these figures as doing full justice to all that was done here; 
but they are more than enough, as they stand, to show that the 
sons and daughters of Brookline were in no degree behind any 
of their neighbors in responding to the demands of that moment- 
ous struggle. The names of those whom Brookline lost in that 
struggle are to be recorded, I understand, on commemorative 
tablets in the spacious vestibule of this Building, so that they may 
never fail to be remembered and honored by all who enter it. 

I would gladly feel that a moment were left me for doing justice 
to others who have lived here, in earlier or later days, and who 
have been distinguished in their various professions or pursuits; 
devoted clergymen, following in the footsteps of James AUeri, the 
first of them ; faithful school-teachers, with John Searle as their 
forerunner; worthy citizens and residents, Clarks and Goddards, 
Heaths and Davises, Hyslops and Harrises, Childs and Seavers, 
Griggses and Tappans and Lees, and other Perkinses, and other 
Warrens, than those I have named, and other Amorys than those 
I might name, were they not still happily among the living. I 
cannot attempt to include one half of those worthy to be in- 
cluded ; but I must by no means omit at least one most emi- 
nent lawyer, Jeremy Gridley, for whom it was glory enough that 
James Otis was his pupil in the law, and treated him with the 
greatest deference, respect, and affection, even while he totally 
demolished his arguments in the memorable cause concerning 
Writs of Assistance, in 1761. 

Nor would I fail to recall such as have made their mark in 
the field of letters. If we are compelled to go a few feet over our 
boundary line to find the home of Parkman, with his " Pontiac," his 
" France in America," and his " Book of Roses," we cannot forget 
that the authoress of those Buckminster Memoirs which Carlyle 
admired, and of " Naomi" and other charming stories of the Olden 
Time, was long a resident here ; that the author of " The Ger- 



51 

man Prose Writers " and of so many excellent versions of Schiller 
and Goethe, to say nothing of later Works, has but just left the 
old Parsonage which almost belonged to hiin as a family inherit- 
ance ; that " Suffolk Surnames " found here their genial and 
humorous collector and commentator ; that one of the earliest 
and most careful writers of the Diplomatic History of our Coun- 
try ,i as well as one of the latest and best writers on Private Inter- 
national Law,2 lo"g h^d a home here ; that here, in a mansion 
then owned or occupied, it may be, by his eminent father, was 
passed at least one of the summers of Prescott, when, under so 
many clouds, he was first seriously pondering his way of life 
and ripening for that rich harvest which is among the glories of 
American Literature ; that perchance the last edition of the best 
History of Spanish Literature may have received some final 
touches from the accomplished Ticknor during his recent and 
repeated residences here ; that not only have more than one of 
the Daily Journals of Boston had leading Editors and Proprietors 
here, but that the " Living Age " — that pure and perpetual res- 
ervoir and fountain of entertainment and instruction, so welcome 
at all our firesides — has almost from the first been edited here ; 
and, finally, that if there have been any Diarists or Annalists 
in New England, since the days of Bradford and Winthrop and 
Prince, worthy to be named with Pepys and Evelyn and Sir 
Henry Holland and Crabb Robinson of Old England, they are 
the elder Sewall and the late Reverend Drs. Holmes and Pierce, 
two of whom we have found so intimately associated with 
our local history. 

Our Public Library should not be without a special alcove, 
or certainly a special shelf, for every thing which has emanated, 
in whole or in part, from Brookline, as well as for every thing 
which may illustrate its own rise and progress and the history 
of the Town. And, one of these days, this very Town Hall, in 
some one of its numerous apartments, should not be wifliout 
portraits ^ not full lengths, for they would soon fill up the 
spaces and leave no room for the men of the future, but Heads, 
at least — of those who have been prominent in your earlier or 
later annals. There is no worthier patronage of American art 
than that which may be afforded in procuring such memorials of 

1 " The Diplomacy of The United States, by Theodore Lyman." 
'•2 "A Treatise on the Conflict of Laws, or Private International Law, by Francis 
Wharton, LL.D." 



52 

the honored dead. The living may well be postponed for the 
verdict of those who come after them. 

And now, fellow citizens and friends, with these historical 
reminiscences, and these sacred memories, in full and fresh con- 
templation, we are here to-day to inaugurate this noble Hall, and 
to dedicate it to all the manifold and varied uses to which such 
an edifice may be legitimately appropriated. We can hardly 
imagine that any increase of population, or any multiplication of 
offices or affairs, or any caprice of taste or fancy, will ever call 
for a more spacious or commodious edifice of the kind. Should 
it escape, as we all pray God that it may escape, the one great 
casualty which the flames of yonder City have so recently and so 
sadly impressed upon our minds, we can hardly look forward to 
its standing less than a full century, as a place for the exercise of 
whatever rights and powers may be possessed by the people who 
dwell here. As long as Brookline shall remain a Town by 
itself, or shall in any way preserve the separate existence which 
it has enjoyed for more than a hundred and sixty-seven years, no 
other place, certainly, can be contemplated for the discharge of 
that great duty of choosing your own rulers which belongs to 
you as freemen. And even should it be your destiny, or your 
will, to relapse into the condition from which your fathers in 
1705, and thirty years before, struggled so hard to release them- 
selves ; and, following the example of some of your neighbors, to 
become a District or a Ward of Boston, still I know not that any 
more central or commodious locality could be assigned for the 
exercise of such privileges and prerogatives as may be left to 
you. We shall none of us, I think, be sorry, even in that case, 
that the good old Town went down with its flag still flying ; — 
and flying on so worthy a symbol of its long-cherished individu- 
ality and independence. 

But your political rights and duties, w^hatever they may be, 
are by no means all for which this costly Building has been 
erected. We dedicate it to-day to other and larger uses. Here, 
from time to time, the popular assembly may be held, to give 
utterance to opinions or resolutions on matters of local or of 
general concern. Here, thrilling appeals of patriotism may be 
heard, in some exigency of public danger or alarm. Here, elo- 
quent and instructive Lectures may be listened to, on Literature 
or History, on Art or Science, on Horticulture or Agriculture, or 



53 

on some of those great moral and social reforms which the wel- 
fare of the Community may demand. Here, some profound and 
exhaustless Agassiz may unveil the mysteries of the earth, and 
of the sea, and of all that they contain. Here, some admirable 
and accomplished Tyndall may illustrate the marvels of polarized 
light and of the circumambient ether, reversing all our old-fash- 
ioned notions, and showing us precisely how the dark rays of the 
Sun, instead of the bright ones, do the main work of melting 
the glaciers, evaporating the rivers, distilling the ocean, and 
heating the Universe. Here, some learned and adventurous 
Froude may charm us with stories of English Elizabeths and 
Scottish Marys ; — certain to be followed by some eloquent and 
indignant Father Burke, if he ever so unwittingly lend color to an 
idea, that Irishmen are not as brave and as true and as trust- 
worthy as their neighbors. Here, some Holmes or Hillard or 
veteran Emerson, some Cooke or Hayes or Lovering, some John 
B. Gough or Wendell Phillips or Henry Ward Beecher, may at 
least serve to remind you, that popular and brilliant Lecturers are 
by no means altogether exotic. Here, some Charlotte Cushman 
may delight us with a life-like rendering of Shakspeare's Queen 
Katharine, or overwhelm us with the power and pathos of Wal- 
ter Scott's Meg Merrilies. Here, Music may pour forth her 
inspiring and ennobling strains, — the grand Symphony, the 
majestic Choral, the sublime Oratorio ; — or, it may be, the 
lighter harmonies of Glees and Madrigals and Part-songs from 
your own Brookline Club. Here, galleries of ancient or modern 
Art may sometimes be arranged, borrowed from the abounding 
treasures of not a few of the neighboring mansions. Here, Chari- 
ty may spread her alluring tables, with the choicest contributions 
of the garden and the conservatory, and with the tasteful products 
of hands ever ready and eager for any work of love. And here, 
gay and happy children, of all classes and sects and nationalities, 
may be seen mingling in the frolic dance, on some holiday of the 
Schools, or on some Anniversary festival of the Town, the State, 
or the Nation. 

I may not venture to depict, or attempt to anticipate, all the 
various scenes which this Hall may exhibit, in the long vista 
of time and change and chance through which we look forward 
to-day, as through the ever-changing, still-combining colors of a 
kaleidoscope. To every use which may become a free, intelli- 



54 

gent, and moral People, we devote and dedicate it ; to rational 
Amusement, to enlightened Culture, to freedom of Speech and of 
Conscience, to Virtue, to Philanthropy, to Patriotism, to Liberty 
and Law ; — to every use which may be for the welfare of the 
community, or, in the good old phrase of the great Father of 
Modern Science, " for the relief of man's estate." 

But, oh, let us not forget those other words which were coupled 
by Lord Bacon with that good old phrase. Let us not forget 
that it was to " the glory of the Creator," as well as to the wel- 
fare of man's estate, that our fathers dedicated every thing, even 
themselves. We have opened our exercises with prayer, and we 
shall presently close them with praise. Let it never be imagined 
that these are mere empty, conventional forms. The walls which 
have grown cold and hard without catching some impress of sup- 
plication and thanksgiving, breathing from sincere and believing 
hearts, and vibrating from glad and grateful lips, have lost more 
than could be supplied by the frescoes of a Raphael. We can do 
without everything else in this world better — immeasurably bet- 
ter — than without the blessing of God; and that blessing is to 
be invoked, here and everywhere, in every hour, in all conditions, 
under all circumstances. The winds and the storms may paralyze 
the machinery, and sweep down the stoutest props of all earthly 
intercommunication ; but the humblest aspirations Heavenward 
of a devout and loving soul have an ever-fixed support, " that 
looks on tempests and is never shaken," — the Same yesterday, 
and to-day, and for ever. 

Clinical calendars and therapeutic tests may well be relied on 
for every thing conceivable, or even inconceivable, within their 
own domain. They cannot be too highly prized for all that they 
have done, and all that they are doing, for the physical welfare of 
mankind. Nor can I think it altogether fair or wise to take up too 
seriously a somewhat sudden and sensational suggestion for en- 
larging the sphere of Hospital statistics. The subject of that sug- 
gestion, if not beyond the range of human argument, is certainly 
far beyond the reach of medical or material experiment. It is 
enough, perhaps more than enough for me, to express the convic- 
tion, that no fears or doubts or faintest misgivings, that nothing, 
nothing but the profoundest compassion and sorrow, in every 
Christian breast, will await or follow an attempt, should it ever 
unhappily be made, to prove that prayer to God for the sick, 



55 

the suffering, and the dying, is not the rational and natural, as 
well as the revealed, resort and refuge of the anxious and ago- 
nized heart. Every such heart will utterly disown the jurisdiction, 
and pour out its petitions with renewed faith and fervor. 

The sense of an all-seeing Eye, of an all-hearing Ear, of an 
all-pervading and all-controlling Providence, is the strongest safe- 
guard of Society, as well as of the individual man. It must be 
cherished by the sons, as it was by the fathers, if our liberty is 
not to degenerate into licentiousness, and our boasted Self-gov- 
ernment into anarchy or despotism. Massachusetts was founded, 
and has been built up, as a Christian Commonwealth, and as a 
Christian Commonwealth it must stand or fall. Conscience must 
be free as the air. Sects and denominations must range them- 
selves, according to their own convictions, under banners of their 
own choice. The State can never again support or favor any 
particular creed or form of religion. But Religion, in all its forms, 
must still support the State ; must still supply the corner-stone 
and the capstone, the strong foundations, and the sustaining 
buttresses and bulwarks, both of State and Nation, if free gov- 
ernment, or any government, is to endure and prosper. 

" Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political pros- 
perity," said he whose birthday we commemorate, in that Fare- 
well Address, which ought to be read in our schools on every 
anniversary of its date, " Of all the dispositions and habits which 
lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispen- 
sable supports, [n vain would that man claim the tribute of 
patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of 
human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and 
of citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought 
to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their 
connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be 
asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, 
if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the 
instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us 
with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be main- 
tained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the in- 
fluence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason 
and experience both forbid us to expect that National Morality 
can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." 

All other words of Washington may become obsolete. His 



56 

great appeals for Peace, domestic and foreign, for Union and the 
Constitution, may be shorn of their application and significance. 
The Constitution may be discarded, and the Union itself perish. 
His own example may cease to be reverenced, and his memory 
lose its hold upon our hearts. But even should such deplorable 
and unimaginable results ever be witnessed in our land, these 
noble words will be as just and true as when they first issued 
from his lips or from his pen. And at this moment, above all 
other moments in our history, when National Morality is in danger 
of becoming a jest and a by-word, they should sink deeper than 
ever before into the soul of every American Patriot. 

To the glory of God, then, as well as to the relief of man's 
estate, let us dedicate our Hall this day ; and may the blessing of 
God ever overshadow it, and ever rest upon all who, in successive 
generations, shall be gathered within it; until, with the lapse of 
years, these glowing colors shall have faded, these massive walls 
shall have fallen, and all the high hopes and joyous associations 
of this occasion, with the remembrance of all who have partici- 
pated in it, shall be buried in oblivion ! 



57 



At the conclusion . of Mr. Winthrop's Address, the fol- 
lowmg original Ode, written by Miss Harriet Woods, for 
the occasion, was sung by the Choral Club : — 

ODE. 

Written for the occasion by Miss Harriet Woods. 

Beneath this noble roof we stand, 

Where skill has reared these massive walls, 

And beauty from our Father's hand 
Streams in where'er the sunlight falls. 

Here, as the years shall come and go, 

Proud Eloquence with lofty strain 
Shall set the listening heart aglow, 

And nerve to noble deeds again. 

Here Music, tuned to fine accord. 

From voices yet unborn, shall ring ; 
And grand, triumphant strains be poured 

From brazen throat and vibrant string. 

Here may the rich man and the poor 

Combine to wield the ballot's might ; 
Contend for truth which shall endure, 

And cancel every wrong with right. 

Long may our town's unsullied name 

Our fair and proud possession be, 
And none but honest patriots claim 

The honors of the brave and free. 

The President then said : — 

The formal transfer of the Town Hall will now take place by 
the delivery of the keys by the Building Committee, through their 
Chairman, Mr. William A. Wellman, to the Board of Selectmen, 
represented by their Chairman, Mr. Charles D. Head. 

William A. Wellman, Esq., Chairman of the Building 
Committee, then rose, and on delivering the keys to 



58 



Charles D. Head, Esq., Chairman of the Board of Select- 
men, spoke as follows : — 



MR. WELLMAN'S ADDRESS. 

In behalf of the Committee to whom was intrusted the erec- 
tion of the Town Hall, it now becomes my duty to surrender to 
you, as Chairman of the Selectmen of the town, the keys of the 
building. 

After the learned and eloquent address from our distinguished 
townsman, any extended remarks would be inappropriate. I shall, 
therefore, briefly submit the doings of our Committee. 

The necessity of a new Town Hall, to meet the growth and 
increasing demands of our people, had become so apparent, that 
at the annual town meeting of the citizens held on the 28th of 
March, 1870, a Committee was appointed to consider the subject, 
and to report in regard to the same at the adjourned town meet- 
ing. The Committee, at their first meeting, without previous 
conference, found themselves a unit in favor of the immediate 
erection of a tasteful, commodious, and substantial edifice for this 
purpose. The Committee were also impressed with the fact 
that the town was seriously deficient in those social advantages 
which would be derived from the possession of such a building. 
Their report was accepted, and the same persons were constituted 
a Building Committee ; viz., William A. Wellman, Charles U. 
Cotting, John C. Abbott, Charles W. Scudder, William Aspinwall, 
Augustine Shurtleff, William K. Melcher, William Lincoln, and 
Martin P. Kennard. The town appropriated the sum of $100,000, 
and placed the same at the disposal of the Committee, who were 
authorized to issue the bonds of the town, payable in twenty years. 
At a subsequent meeting #50,000 were added to the appropriation, 
for which sums the bonds were negotiated at six per cent, at their 
par value, and a sinking fund has been provided for their redemp- 
tion. The cost of the building will not exceed the appropriations. 

The first duty of the Committee was to invite plans and sketches, 
with the understanding that the author of the accepted design 
should be employed as the architect. All were requested to sign 
their designs with a motto, and enclose their names in an enve- 
lope, to remain until the choice was made. Sixteen designs were 
oft'ered, and after very careful study and consideration the one with 



59 

a red seal was chosen, and disclosed the name of the author to be 
S. J. F. Thayer, Esq., of Boston. The contract for the masonry- 
was taken by Messrs. Adams & Barstow, of Boston ; and for the 
carpenter work by our townsman, Mr. William K. Melcher. The 
corner-stone of the building was laid, in the presence of the town 
officers. May 23, 1871. 

The structure is upon the site of the old Town Hall, which was 
removed to Prospect Street. This is the third Hall the inhabitants 
have built for town purposes. The first was dedicated Jan. 1, 
1825, a small stone building, afterwards used for the High School, 
and now standing on Walnut Street, near the First Church. 
The second was opened on the 14th October, 1845, twenty years 
after the first; and the late venerable Dr. Pierce, in his address 
on the occasion, remarked : " The progressive improvements of 
modern times render it not improbable that, when this beauteous 
fabric shall grow old, it may give place to an edifice which shall 
as far exceed this as the present is superior to the rude structures 
of former times." A generation (twenty-eight years) has elapsed 
since those words were spoken, and we are here to-day to dedicate 
this building — which, we trust, will outlast many generations — 
to the purposes for which it was designed. 

In style, this structure is a secular Gothic, well fitted for a 
building designed for municipal uses. The principal facjade has 
three entrances, divided by polished granite columns with carved 
capitals, the whole being covered with an arch resting upon solid 
abutments, and forming above the entrance a large window, which 
is divided by granite mullions. Above this window, and nearly 
in the centre of the front, is an arcade enclosing several windows, 
which are separated by short granite shafts. Still higher is the 
cornice, ornate in character, and somewhat above the general 
level. The centre of the front rises to a height of one hundred 
feet, being higher than any other portion of the structure. The 
roof is slated in green, red, and purple, in ornamental style. 
The building is three stories in height, and constructed of rose- 
colored granite from Dedham, and trimmed with light-gray ham- 
mered granite from Blue Hill, Maine, having a massive base of 
the same inaterial, while the body is quarry faced. The ground- 
floor is a rectangle, 90 feet in width by 136 feet in length, each 
side being recessed 10 feet, and 56 feet of the centre front project- 
ing, giving an extreme width of 90 feet and extreme length of 146 



60 

feet. The first floor is 7i feet above the grade of the location, 
and is divided into corridors, offices, and a hall. Entering by the 
main doorway, we pass through the vestibule, 39 feet long by 30 
in width, with a tile floor. In this vestibule, and on either side 
of the entrance, are the staircases leading to the second story. 
Beyond this is a corridor 15 feet in width, extending back half 
the length of the building, where it meets another corridor run- 
ning at right angles with it, and giving an entrance on Prospect 
Street, through a carriage porch. On either side of the main 
corridor are three rooms, 23 feet width, for the use of the town 
officers. At the rear of the main corridor is the lower hall, in the 
rear of the building, which will seat between five and six hundred 
persons, and is designed for political or other meetings, which do 
not require the larger hall. Ascending the broad staircases, we 
enter this hall, which is 65i wide by 92* feet in length ; and it 
will seat between twelve and fourteen hundred persons. Its form 
is an elongated octagon. The walls are 37 feet in height, the 
ceilings extend into the roof 16 feet, giving in the centre a height 
of 53 feet. The decorations and windows were done by McPher- 
son & McDonald, of Boston. The main vestibule is decorated in 
a style like to the hall, and is lighted by a large window, in which 
are placed the coat-of-arms of the United States and of the State, 
both in medallion. The building is heated by indirect radiation 
of steam, under the direction of T. S. Clagston, of Boston. 

The character of the work is completed in the spirit of the lib- 
erality of the town ; and the Committee having discharged their 
duty, I now place in your hands the keys of the building. 

At the close of Mr. Wellman's Address, Charles D. 
Head, Esq., Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, rose, 
and, on receiving the keys, spoke as follows : — 

MR. HEAD'S ADDRESS. 

Mr. Chairman, — In behalf of the citizens of Brookline, I 
receive, with pleasure, these keys, as the symbol of the transfer 
from your Committee to the town of this finished Town Hall. 
We owe it to your good taste, and that of the gentlemen asso- 
ciated with you on the Building Committee, that Brookline has 
this town building, of which she may justly feel proud ; that we 



61 

have this beautiful Hall, and the agreeable and convenient offices 
below. And I assure you that your fellow-citizens fully appreci- 
ate the cares and anxieties you have had, — which are inseparable 
from a work of this kind ; and that they gratefully acknowledge 
that the important duty they confided to you has been by you as 
conscientiously as it has been to them satisfactorily performed : 
so satisfactorily, that no feeling of disappointment mars the pleas- 
ure of this day's dedicatory exercises. 

And now, fellow-citizens, — or, as our formal services are nearly 
ended, let me say, ladies and gentlemen, friends, — I congratu- 
late you on being possessors of this beautiful building ; and I 
congratulate you that you were able to secure the aid of the 
eloquent and distinguished gentleman who has this afternoon 
addressed us, and has given to our services of dedication a 
character, a tone, which so well befit the useful beauty of our 
Hall. And let me try to comfort you, if, perchance, the recol- 
lection of its cost comes to your minds, by saying that if you 
receive from your new Town Hall as long and as honorable ser- 
vice as New England has received from the Winthrop family, I 
don't believe the youngest person here will live to find fault with 
either architect or contractors ; for that service extends to nearly 
two hundred and fifty years. 

I feel there is much more I might say, but I refrain, even at the 
risk of disappointing your not unreasonable expectations, and for 
two reasons : the first is, that this is the first Town Hall our friends 
of the Building Committee have ever mastered, and I fear we 
may check their natural aspirations for improvement in future 
efforts of this kind if we are too profuse in our praise ; the second 
is, that this is, as you have been reminded, the birthday of a man 
whose example every American should imitate as well as he can, 
and one of his leading merits was, according to a recent com- 
mentator, — the late Mr. A. Ward, — whose words have a startling 
significance to me at this time : " George Washington never 
said too much." I quote from memory. 

Will you allow me, in closing, as " one whose sands of life," 
&c., — I mean official life, and allegorical sands, — to indulge in a 
single word of caution ? It is said that History repeats herself. In 
our library, near by, is a book written some years since, in a difficult 
and but little understood Oriental language, which can be read 
only by the best scholars, — I suppose most of you have read it. 



62 

it has been translated, — which gives an account of the building 
of what I believe to have been the first Town Hall ever built. 
As this was before the art of printing was invented, the account 
is meagre. No names of the Building Committee are given, and we 
are left to guess whether, in the crude civilization of those early- 
days, they used beasts of burden, or even had a Board of Select- 
men. But this we do know, that our distant relatives were so 
elated at the height and beauty of their Town Hall, that they felt 
themselves more than human to have produced such a structure, 
and expected to force their way into heaven by its architectural 
pre-eminence. You, who know the sad fate of those early 
builders on the plain of Shinar, will hesitate before you give 
utterance to too vain laudations of the work of your hands ; for we 
are told that, as a punishment for their great conceit, they ceased 
to be a united and harmonious people speaking in one tongue, 
and had differences in words, and were scattered ; which means, 
I suppose, that they were swallowed by or annexed to other and, 
perhaps, more discreet municipalities. 

I beg your pardon. A few moments since I said that the for- 
malities of our dedication were ended. How could I forget that 
every man, woman, and child here present expected to try the sound 
of his or her voice in your new Hall ? I can realize, from recent 
personal experience, how impatient you must be; so we will 
give you each the opportunity, by asking you to join in the 
Doxology. 

At the conclusion of Mr. Head's Address, the whole 
audience rose and sung the following Hymn, to the tune 
of "Old Hundred:" — 

From all that dwell below the skies, 
Let the Creator's praise arise ! 
Let the Redeemer's name be sung, 
"^ Through every land, by every tongue ! 

Eternal are thy mercies, Lord ! 

Eternal truth attends thy word ; 

Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore, 

Till suns shall rise and set no more. 



63 

The audience then resumed their seats, and the Eev. 
William Wilberforce Newton, Rector of Saint Paul's 
Church, Brookhne, pronounced the following Benediction, 
and the ceremonies of the occasion ended : — 

The Lord our God be with us as he was with our fathers. Let 
Him not leave us nor forsake us : That He may incline our hearts 
unto Him, to walk in all His ways, and to keep His Command- 
ments and His Statutes and His Judgments, which He com- 
manded our fathers : That all the people of the earth may know 
that the Lord is God, and that there is none else. Amen. 

In the evening, a Promenade Concert was given in the 
Upper Hall, by the Brookline Band, to which all cit- 
izens were invited, and which was largely attended by 
all classes. This entertainment was a fitting close to the 
scenes of the day, as it gave all the inhabitants an oppor- 
tunity of taking a share in the first day's enjoyment of the 
New Town Hall. 



64 



SUBSEQUENT PROCEEDINGS. 



At a Town Meeting holden on the twenty-seventh day 
of February, 1873, the following votes were passed, on 
the motion of George M. Towle, Esq.: — 

Voted, That the thanks of the inhabitants of the town of 
Brookline be presented to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, for the 
able, learned, and eloquent Address delivered by him on the 
occasion of dedicating the new Town Hall ; and that the Select- 
men of the town communicate this vote to him, and request of 
him a copy of his Address for publication. 

Voted, That William Aspinwall, William A. Wellman, and 
Charles D. Head be a Committee to compile and print the pro- 
ceedings, speeches, and Inaugural Address of the Hon. Robert C. 
Winthrop, at the dedication of the Town Hall on the twenty- 
second day of February, 1873, with such other matter as they 
may deem advisable. 

The duty imposed upon this Committee has now been 
performed, and its results are laid before the inhabitants 
of the town of Brookline. 



Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 



